i 



CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 




CHARLES SUMNER 



CAMBRIDGE 
SKETCHES 



BY 

FRANK PRESTON STEARNS 

AUTHOR OF "TRUE REFUBLICA$IISM,'«' *< LIFE OF PRINCE OTTO 

VON BISMARCK,'* ** SKETCHES FROM CONCORD 

AND APPLEDORE," ETC. 




PHILADELPHIA ^ LONDON 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

1905 






Copyright, 1905 

BY 

J. B. LippiNcoTT Company 



APR ? 1 yu6 



Published Afrily 1905 



Printed by 
J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U. S. A. 



PREFACE 



It has never been my practice to introduce 
myself to distinguished persons, or to attempt 
in any way to attract their attention, and I now 
regret that I did not embrace some opportuni- 
ties which occurred to me in early life for doing 
so; but at the time I knew the men whom I 
have described in the present volume I had no 
expectation that I should ever write about them. 
My acquaintance with them, however, has 
served to give me a more elevated idea of 
human nature than I otherwise might have 
acquired in the ordinary course of mundane 
affairs, and it is with the hope of transmitting 
this impression to my readers that I publish 
the present account. Some of them have a 
world-wide celebrity, and others who were 
distinguished in their own time seem likely 
now to be forgotten; but they all deserve well 
of the republic of humanity and of the age in 
which they lived. 

The Evergreens, January 4, 1905. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Close of the War 13 

Francis J. Child 40 

Longfellow 55 

Lowell 83 

C. P. Cranch 113 

T. G. Appleton 132 

Doctor Holmes 142 

Frank Bird and the Bird Club 162 

Sumner 180 

Chevalier Howe 218 

The War Governor 242 

The Colored Regiments 262 

Emerson's Tribute to George L. Stearns 279 

Elizur Wright 286 

Dr. W. T. G. Morton 309 

Leaves from a Roman Diary 332 

Centennial Contributions 355 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

¥ 

PAGE 

Charles Sumner Frontispiece 

Francis J. Child 48 

C. P. Cranch 113 

F. W. Bird 162 

John A. Andrew 242 ^ 

Major George L. Steams 262 

Elizur Wright 286 



11 



CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

¥ 
THE CLOSE OF THE WAE 

Never before hast thou shone 
So beautifully upon the Thebans; 
0, eye of golden day: 

— Antigone of Sophocles. 

On^e bright morning in April, 1865, Haw- 
thorne's son and the writer were coming forth 
together from the further door-way of Stough- 
ton Hall at Harvard College, when, as the last 
reverberations of the prayer-bell were sound- 
ing, a classmate called to us across the yard: 
^^ General Lee has surrendered!'' There was 
a busy hum of voices where the three converging 
lines of students met in front of Appleton 
Chapel, and when we entered the building there 
was President Hill seated in the recess between 
the two pulpits, and old Doctor Peabody at his 
desk, with his face beaming like that of a saint 
in an old religious painting. His prayer was 
exceptionally fervid and serious. He asked a 
blessing on the American people; on all those 
who had suffered from the war ; on the govern- 
ment of the United States ; and on our defeated 

13 



14 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

enemies. When the short service had ended, 
Doctor Hill came forward and said : * ^ It is not 
fitting that any college tasks or exercises should 
take place until another sun has arisen after 
this glorious morning. Let us all celebrate this 
fortunate evenf 

On leaving the chapel we found that Flavins 
Josephus Cook, afterwards Rev. Joseph Cook 
of the Monday Lectureship, had collected the 
members of the Christian Brethren about him, 
and they were all singing a hymn of thanks- 
giving in a very vigorous manner. 

There were some, however, who recollected 
on their way to breakfast the sad procession 
that had passed through the college-yard six 
months before, — the military funeral of James 
Russell Lowell's nephews, killed in General 
Sheridan's victory at Cedar Run. There were 
no recent graduates of Harvard more univer- 
sally beloved than Charles and James Lowell; 
and none of whom better things were expected. 
To Lowell himself, who had no other children, 
except a daughter, they were almost like his 
own sons, and the ode he wrote on this occasion 
touches a depth of pathos not to be met with 
elsewhere in his poetry. There was not at that 
time another family in Cambridge or Boston 
which contained two such bright intellects, two 
such fine characters. It did not seem right 
that they should both have left their mother, 



THE CLOSE OF THE WAR 15 

who was bereaved already by a faithless hus- 
band, to fight the battles of their country, how- 
ever much they were needed for this. Even in 
the most despotic period of European history 
the only son of a widow was exempt from con- 
scription. Then to lose them both in a single 
day! Mrs. Lowell became the saint of Quincy 
Street, and none were so hardened or self- 
absorbed as not to do her reverence. 

But now the terrible past was eclipsed by the 
joy and pride of victory. The great heroic 
struggle was over ; young men could look for- 
ward to the practice of peaceable professions, 
and old men had no longer to think of the ex- 
hausting drain upon their resources. Fond 
mothers could now count upon the survival of 
their sons, and young wives no longer feared to 
become widows in a night. Everywhere there 
was joy and exhilaration. To many it was the 
happiest day they had ever known. 

President Hill was seen holding a long and 
earnest conversation with Agassiz on the path 
towards his house. The professors threw aside 
their contemplated work. Every man went to 
drink a glass of wine with his best friend, and 
to discuss the fortunes of the republic. The 
ball-players set off for the Delta, where Me- 
morial Hall now stands, to organize a full 
match game; the billiard experts started a 
tournament on Mr. Lyon's new tables; and 



16 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

the rowing men set off for a three-hours' pull 
down Boston harbor. Others collected in 
groups and discussed the future of their coun- 
try with the natural precocity of youthful 
minds. ^'Here," said a Boston cousin of the 
two young Lowells, to a pink-faced, sandy- 
haired ball-player, ^^you are opposed to capital 
punishment ; do you think Jeff. Davis ought to 
be hung!" ^'Just at present," replied the 
latter, ^^I am more in favor of suspending Jeff. 
Davis than of suspending the law, ' ' — an opinion 
that was greeted with laughter and applause. 
The general sentiment of the crowd was in favor 
of permitting General Lee to retire in peace to 
private life; but in regard to the president of 
the Southern Confederacy the feeling was more 
vindictive. 

We can now consider it fortunate that no such 
retaliatory measures were taken by the govern- 
ment. Much better that Jefferson Davis, and 
his confederates in the secession movement, 
should have lived to witness every day the con- 
sequences of that gigantic blunder. Th^ fact 
that they adopted a name for their newly- 
organized nation which did not differ essen- 
tially from the one which they had discarded; 
that their form of government, with its consti- 
tution and laws, differed so slightly from those 
of the United States, is sufficient to indicate 
that their separation was not to be permanent, 



THE CLOSE OF THE WAR 17 

and that it only required the abolition of slavery 
to bring the Southern States back to their for- 
mer position in the Union. If men and nations 
did what was for their true interests, this would 
be a different world. 

At that time the college proper consisted of 
three recitation buildings, and four or five dor- 
mitories, besides Appleton Chapel, and little 
old Holden Chapel of the seventeenth century, 
which still remains the best architecture on the 
grounds. The buildings were mostly old, plain, 
and homely, and the rooms of the students 
simply furnished. In every class there were 
twelve or fifteen dandies, who dressed in some- 
what above the height of the fashion, but they 
served to make the place more picturesque and 
were not so likely to be mischievous as some 
of the rougher country boys. It was a time of 
plain, sensible living. To hire a man to make 
fires in winter, and black the boots, was con- 
sidered a great luxury. A majority of the stu- 
dents blacked their own boots, although they 
found this very disagreeable. The college 
pump was a venerable institution, a leveller of 
all distinctions; and many a pleasant conver- 
sation took place about its wooden trough. No 
student thought of owning an equipage, and a 
Eussell or a Longworth would as soon have 
hired a sedan chair as a horse and buggy, when 



18 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

he might have gone on foot. Good pedestrian- 
ism was the pride of the Harvard student ; and 
an honest, wholesome pride it was. There was 
also some good running. Both Julian Haw- 
thorne and Thomas W. Ward ran to Concord, 
a distance of sixteen miles, without stopping, I 
believe, by the way. William Blaikie, the stroke 
of the University crew, walked to New York 
during the Thanksgiving recess — six days in all. 

The undergraduates had not yet become ac- 
quainted with tennis, the most delightful of 
light exercises, and foot-ball had not yet been 
regulated according to the rules of Eugby and 
Harrow. The last of the pernicious foot-ball 
fights between Sophomores and Freshmen took 
place in September, 1863, and commenced in 
quite a sanguinary manner. A Sophomore 
named Wright knocked over Ellis, the captain 
of the Freshman side, without reason or provo- 
cation, and was himself immediately laid pros- 
trate by a red-headed Scotch boy named Rod- 
erick Dhu Coe, who seemed to have come to 
college for the purpose, for he soon afterwards 
disappeared and was never seen there again. 
With the help of Coe and a few similar spirits, 
the Freshmen won the game. It was the first 
of President HilPs reforms to abolish this 
brutal and unseemly custom. 

The New York game of base-ball, which has 
since assumed such mammoth proportions, was 



THE CLOSE OF THE WAR 19 

first introduced in onr colleges by Wright and 
Flagg, of the Class of ^66 ; and the first game, 
which the Cambridge ladies attended, was 
played on the Delta in May of that year with 
the Trimountain Club of Boston. Flagg was 
the finest catcher in New England at that time ; 
and, although he was never chosen captain, he 
was the most skilful manager of the game. It 
was he who invented the double-play which can 
sometimes be accomplished by muffing a fly- 
catch between the bases. He caught without 
mask or gloves and was several times wounded 
by the ball. 

Let us retrace the steps of time and take a 
look at the old Delta on a bright June evening, 
when the shadows of the elms are lengthening 
across the grass. There are from fifty to a 
hundred students, and perhaps three or four 
professors, watching the Harvard nine practise 
in preparation for its match with the formidable 
Lowell nine of Boston. Who is that slender 
youth at second base, — with the long nose and 
good-humored twinkle in his eye, — who never 
allows a ball to pass by him? Will he ever 
become the Dean of the Harvard Law School? 
And that tall, olive-complexioned fellow in the 
outfield, six feet two in his ball-shoes, — who 
would suppose that he is destined to go to Con- 
gress and serve his country' as Minister to 
Spain ! There is another dark-eyed youth lean- 



20 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

ing against the fence and watching the ball as it 
passes to and fro. Is he destined to become 
Governor of Massachusetts? And that sturdy- 
looking first-baseman, — will he enter the min- 
istry and preach sermons in Appleton Chapel? 
These young men all live quiet, sensible lives, 
and trouble themselves little concerning class 
honors and secret societies. If they have a 
characteristic in common it is that they always 
keep their mental balance and never go to ex- 
tremes; but neither they nor others have any 
suspicion of their several destinies. Could they 
return and fill their former places on the 
ground, how strangely they would feel! But 
the ground itself is gone; their youth is gone, 
and the honors that have come to them seem 
less important than the welfare of their families 
and kindred. 

Misdemeanors, great and small, on the part 
of the students were more common formerly 
than they have been in recent years, for the 
good reason that the chances of detection were 
very much less. Some of the practical jokes 
were of a much too serious character. The 
college Bible was abstracted from the Chapel 
and sent to Yale; the communion wine was 
stolen ; a paper bombshell was exploded behind 
a curtain in the Greek recitation-room; and 
Professor Pierce discovered one morning that 
all his black-boards had been painted white. 



THE CLOSE OF THE WAR 21 

All the copies of Cooke's Chemical Physics sud- 
denly disappeared one afternoon, and next 
morning the best scholars in the Junior Class 
were obliged to say, '^Not prepared." 

A society called the Med. Fac. was chiefly re- 
sponsible for these performances ; but so secret 
was it in its membership and proceedings that 
neither the college faculty nor the great major- 
ity of the students really knew whether there 
was such a society in existence or not. A judge 
of the United States Circuit Court, who had 
belonged to it in his time, was not aware that 
his own son was a member of it. 

Some of the members of this society turned 
out well, and others badly; but generally an 
inclination for such high pranks shows a levity 
of nature that bodes ill for the future. A 
college class is a wonderful study in human 
nature, from the time it enters until its mem- 
bers have arrived at forty or fifty years of age. 
There was one young man at Harvard in those 
days who was so evidently marked out by des- 
tiny for a great public career that when he was 
elected to Congress in 1876 his classmates were 
only surprised because it seemed so natural 
that this should happen. Another was of so 
depraved a character that it seemed as if he was 
intended to illustrate the bad boy in a Sunday- 
school book. He was so untrustworthy that 
very soon no one was willing to associate with 



22 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

him. He stole from Ms father, and, after grad- 
uating, went to prison for forgery and finally 
was killed by a tornado. There was still 
another, a great fat fellow, who always seemed 
to be half asleep, and was very shortly rnn 
over and killed by a locomotive. Yet if we could 
know the whole truth in regard to these persons 
it might be difficult to decide how much of their 
good and evil fortune was owing to themselves 
and how much to hereditary tendencies and 
early influences. The sad fact remains that it 
is much easier to spoil a bright boy than to 
educate a dull one. 

The undergraduates were too much absorbed 
in their own small affairs to pay much attention 
to politics, even in those exciting times. For 
the most part there was no discrimination 
against either the Trojans or Tyrians ; but abo- 
litionists were not quite so well liked as others, 
especially after the close of the war ; and it was 
noticed that the sons of pro-slavery families 
commonly seemed to have lacked the good moral 
training (and the respect for industry) which 
is youth's surest protection against the pitfalls 
of life. The larger proportion of suspended 
students belonged to this class. 

During the war period Cambridge social life 
was regulated by a coterie of ten or twelve 
young ladies who had grown up together and 
who were generally known as the ^' Spree," — 



THE CLOSE OF THE WAR 23 

not because they were given to romping, for 
none kept more strictly within the bounds of a 
decorous propriety, but because they were 
accustomed to go off together in the summer to 
the White Mountains or to some other rustic 
resort, where they were supposed to have a per- 
fectly splendid time; and this they probably 
did, for it requires cultivation and refinement 
of feeling to appreciate nature as well as art. 
They decided what students and other young 
ladies should be invited to the assemblies in 
Lyceum Hall, and they arranged their own pri- 
vate entertainments over the heads of their 
fathers and mothers; and it should be added 
that they exercised their authority with a very 
good grace. They had their friends and ad- 
mirers among the collegians, but no young man 
of good manners and pleasing address, and 
above all who was a good dancer, needed to beg 
for an invitation. The good dancers, however, 
were in a decided minority, and many who con- 
sidered themselves so in their own habitats 
found themselves much below the standard in 
Cambridge. 

Mrs. James Eussell Lowell was one of the 
lady patronesses of the assemblies, and her hus- 
band sometimes came to them for an hour or so 
before escorting her home. He watched the 
performance with a poet's eye for whatever is 
graceful and charming, but sometimes also 



24 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

with a humorous smile playing upon his face. 
There were some very good dancers among 
the ladies who skimmed the floor almost like 
swallows; but the finest waltzer in Cam- 
bridge or Boston was Theodore Colburn, 
who had graduated ten years previously, and 
with the advantage of a youthful figure, had 
kept up the pastime ever since. The present 
writer has never seen anywhere another man 
who could waltz with such consummate ease and 
unconscious grace. Lowell's eyes followed him 
continually; but it is also said that Colburn 
would willingly dispense with the talent for 
better success in his profession. Next to him 
comes the tall ball-player, already referred to, 
and it is delightful to see the skill with which 
he adapts his unusual height to the most petite 
damsel on the floor. Here the ^^ Spree'' is 
omnipotent, but it does not like Class Day, for 
then Boston and its suburbs pour forth their 
torrent of beauty and fashion, and Cambridge 
for the time being is left somewhat in the shade. 
Henry James in his ''International Episode" 
speaks as if New York dancers were the best 
in the world, and they are certainly more light- 
footed than English men and women; but a 
New York lady, with whom Mr. James is well 
acquainted, says that Bostonians and Austrians 
are the finest dancers. The true Bostonian 
cultivates a sober reserve in his waltzing which. 



THE CLOSE OF THE WAR 25 

if not too serious, adds to the grace of his move- 
ment. Yet, when the german is over, we re- 
member the warning of the wealthy Corinthian 
who refused his daughter to the son of Tisander 
on the ground that he was too much of a dancer 
and acrobat. 

From 1840 to 1860 Harvard University prac- 
tically stagnated. The world about it pro- 
gressed, but the college remained unchanged. 
Its presidents were excellent men, but they had 
lived too long under the academic shade. They 
lacked practical experience in the great world. 
There were few lectures in the college course, 
and the recitations were a mere routine. The 
text-books on philosophical subjects were nar- 
row and prejudiced. Modern languages were 
sadly neglected; and the tradition that a 
French instructor once entertained his class by 
telling them his dreams, if not true, was at least 
characteristic. The sons of wealthy Bostonians 
were accustomed to brag that they had gone 
through college without doing any real study- 
ing. To the college faculty politics only meant 
the success of Webster and the great Whig 
party. The anti-slavery agitation was consid- 
ered inconvenient and therefore prejudicial. 
During the struggle for free institutions in 
Kansas, the president of Harvard College 
undertook to debate the question in a public 



26 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

meeting, but he displayed such lamentable igno- 
rance that he was soon obliged to retire in 
confusion. 

The war for the Union, however, waked up 
the slumbering university, as it did all other 
institutions and persons. Rev. Thomas Hill 
was chosen president in 1861, and was the first 
anti-slavery president of the college since 
Josiah Quincy ; and this of itself indicated that 
he was in accord with the times, — had not set 
his face obstinately against them. He was not 
so practical a man as President Quincy, but he 
was one of the best scholars in America. His 
administration has not been looked upon as a 
success, but he served to break the ice and to 
open the way for future navigation. He ac- 
cepted the position with definite ideas of re- 
form; but he lacked skill in the adaptation of 
means to ends. He was determined to show no 
favoritism to wealth and social position, and 
he went perhaps too far in the opposite direc- 
tion. One day when the workmen were digging 
the cellar of Gray's Hall, President Hill threw 
off his coat, seized a shovel, and used it vigor- 
ously for half an hour or more. This was in- 
tended as an example to teach the students the 
dignity of labor; but they did not understand 
it so. At the faculty meetings he carried infor- 
mality of manner to an excess. He depended 
too much on personal influence, which, as 



THE CLOSE OF THE WAR 27 

George Washington said formerly, *^ cannot 
become government." He wrote letters to the 
Sophomores exhorting them not to haze the 
Freshmen, and, as a consequence, the Freshmen 
were hazed more severely than ever. Then he 
suspended the Sophomores in a wholesale man- 
ner, many of them for slight offences. How- 
ever, he stopped the foot-ball fights, and made 
the examinations much more strict than they 
had been previously. He endeavored to incul- 
cate the true spirit of scholarship among the 
students, — not to study for rank but from a 
genuine love of the subject. The opposition 
that his reforms excited made him unpopular, 
and Freshmen came to college so prejudiced 
against him that all his kindness and good-will 
were wasted upon them. 

*^ There goes the greatest man in this coun- 
try," said a fashionable Boston youth, one day 
in the spring of 1866. It was Louis Agassiz 
returning from a call on President Hill. Such 
a statement shows that the speaker belonged 
to a class of people called Tories, in 1776, and 
who might properly be called so still. As a 
matter of fact, Agassiz had long since passed 
the meridian of his reputation, and his sun was 
now not far from setting. He had returned 
from his expedition to South America with a 
valuable collection of fishes and other scientific 
materials ; but his theory of glaciers, which he 



28 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

went there to substantiate, had not been proven. 
Darwin's ''Origin of Species" had already- 
swept his nicely-constructed plans of original 
types into the fire of futile speculation. Yet 
Agassiz was a great man in his way, and his 
importance was universally recognized. He 
had given a vigorous and much-needed impetus 
to the study of geology in America, and as a 
compendium of all the different branches of 
natural history there was nobody like him. In 
his lifelong single-minded devotion to science 
he had few equals and no superiors. He cared 
not for money except so far as it helped the 
advancement of his studies. For many years 
Madam Agassiz taught a select school for young 
ladies (to which Emerson, among others, sent 
his daughters), in order to provide funds for 
her husband to carry on his work. It is to be 
feared that the Commonwealth of Massachu- 
setts was rather stingy to him. Edward Ever- 
ett once made an eloquent address in his behalf 
to the legislature, but it had no effect. Louis 
Napoleon's munificent offers could not induce 
him to return to Paris, for he believed that 
more important work was to be done in the 
new world, — which, by the way, he considered 
the oldest portion of the globe. 

In height and figure Agassiz was so much like 
Doctor Hill that when the two were together 
this was very noticeable. They were both broad- 



THE CLOSE OF THE WAR 29 

shouldered, deep-chested men, and of about the 
same height, with large, well-rounded heads; 
but Agassiz had an elastic French step, whereas 
Doctor Hill walked with something of a shuffle. 
One might even imagine Agassiz dancing a 
waltz. Lowell said of him that he was ''em- 
phatically a man, and that wherever he went he 
made a friend." His broad forehead seemed 
to smile upon you while he was talking, and 
from his simple-hearted and genial manners 
you felt that he would be a friend whenever you 
wanted one. He was the busiest and at the 
same time one of the most accessible persons 
in the university. 

On one occasion, happening to meet a number 
of students at the corner of University Build- 
ing, one of them was bold enough to say to him : 
''Prof. Agassiz, would you be so good as to 
explain to us the difference between the stone 
of this building and that of Boylston Hall? 
We know that they are both granite, but they 
do not look alike." Agassiz was delighted, and 
entertained them with a brief lecture on 
primeval rocks and the crust of the earth's 
surface. He told them that Boylston Hall was 
made of syenite ; that most of the stone called 
granite in New England was syenite, and if 
they wanted to see genuine granite they should 
go to the tops of the White Mountains. Then 
looking at his watch he said: "Ah, I see I am 



30 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

late! Good day, my friends; and I hope we 
shall all meet again." So off he went, leaving 
each of his hearers with the embryonic germ 
of a scientific interest in his mind. 

Longfellow tells in his diary how Agassiz 
came to him when his health broke down and 
wept. ^'I cannot work any longer," he said; 
and when he could not work he was miserable. 
The trouble that afflicted him was congestion 
of the base of the brain, a disorder that is not 
caused so frequently by overwork as by mental 
emotion. His cure by Dr. Edward H. Clarke, 
by the use of bromides and the application of 
ice, was considered a remarkable one at the 
time ; but ^yq years later the disorder returned 
again and cost him his life. 

He believed that the Laurentian Mountains, 
north of the St. Lawrence River, was the first 
land which showed itself above the waste of 
waters with which the earth was originally 
surmounted. 

Perhaps the most picturesque figure on the 
college grounds was the old Greek professor, 
Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles; a genuine 
importation from Athens, whom the more im- 
aginative sort of people liked to believe was 
descended from the Greek poet Sophocles of 
the Periclean age. He was much too honest 
himself to give countenance to this rumor, and 
if you inquired of him concerning it, he would 



THE CLOSE OF THE WAR 31 

say that he should like very well to believe it, 
and it was not impossible, although there were 
no surnames in ancient Greece before the time 
of Constantine ; he had not found any evidence 
in favor of it. He was a short, thick-set man 
with a large head and white Medusa-like hair; 
but such an eye as his was never seen in an 
Anglo-Saxon face. It reminded you at once of 
Byron's Corsair, and suggested contingencies 
such as find no place in quiet, law-abiding New 
England, — the possibility of sudden and ter- 
rible concentration. His clothing had been 
long since out of fashion, and he always wore 
a faded cloth cap, such as no student would 
dare to put on. He lived like a hermit in No. 
3 Holworthy, where he prepared his own meals 
rather than encounter strange faces at a board- 
ing-house table. Once he invited the president 
of the college to supper; and the president 
went, not without some misgivings as to what 
his entertainment might be. He found, how- 
ever, a simple but well-served repast, including 
a French roll and a cup of black coffee with 
the grounds in it. The coffee loosened Soph- 
ocles 's usually reticent tongue, and after that, 
as the president himself expressed it, they had 
a delightful conversation. Everybody respected 
Sophocles in spite of his eccentric mode of life, 
and the Freshmen were as much afraid of him 
as if he had been the Minotaur of Crete. 



32 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

The reason for his economy did not become 
apparent until after his death. When he first 
came to the university he made friends with a 
gentleman in Cambridge to whom he was much 
attached, but who, at the time we write of, had 
long since been dead. It was to support the 
daughters of his friend, who would have other- 
wise been obliged to earn their own living, that 
he saved his money ; and in his will he left them 
a competency of fifty thousand dollars or more. 

On one occasion a Freshman was sent to him 
to receive a private admonition for writing pro- 
fane language on a settee; but the Freshman 
denied the accusation. Sophocles 's eyes 
twinkled. ^^Did you not,'' said he, ''write the 
letters d-a-m-n!" ''No," said the boy, laugh- 
ing; "it must have been somebody else." 
Sophocles laughed and said he would report the 
case back to the college faculty. A few days 
later he stopped the youth in the college yard 
and, merely saying "I have had your private 
admonition revoked," passed on. Professor 
Sophocles was right. If the Freshman had 
tried to deceive him he would not have laughed 
but looked grave. 

The morning in April, 1861, after President 
Lincoln had issued his call for 75,000 troops, a 
Harvard Senior mentioned it to Sophocles, who 
said to him: "What can the government accom- 
plish with 75,000 soldiers! It is going to take 



THE CLOSE OF THE WAR 33 

half a million of men to suppress this rebel- 
lion.^' 

He was a good instructor in his way, but dry 
and methodical. Professor Goodwin's recita- 
tions were much more interesting. Sophocles 
did not credit the tradition of Homer's wander- 
ing about blind and poor to recite his two great 
epics. He believed that Homer was a prince, 
or even a king, like the psalmist David, and 
asserted that this could be proved or at least 
rendered probable by internal evidence. This 
much is morally certain, that if Homer became 
blind it must have been after middle life. To 
describe ancient battle-scenes so vividly he 
must have taken part in them ; and his knowl- 
edge of anatomy is very remarkable. He does 
not make such mistakes in that line as bringing 
Desdemona to life after she has been smothered. 

How can we do justice to such a great-hearted 
man as Dr. Andrew P. Peabody? He was not 
intended by nature for a revolutionary char- 
acter, and in that sense he was unsuited, like 
Everett, for the time in which he lived. If he 
had been chosen president of the university 
after the resignation of Doctor Hill, as George 
S. Hillard and other prominent graduates de- 
sired, the great broadening and liberalizing of 
the university, which has taken place since, 
would have been deferred for the next fifteen 
years. He had little sympathy with the anti- 



34 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

slavery movement, and was decidedly opposed 
to the religious liberalism of his time ; but Doc- 
tor Peabody's interest lay in the salvation of 
human souls, and in this direction he had no 
equal. He felt a personal regard in every hu- 
man being with whom he was acquainted, and 
this seemed more important to him than ab- 
stract schemes for the improvement of the race 
in general. He was a man of peace and wished 
all others to be at peace ; the confusion and irri- 
tation that accompanies reform was most dis- 
agreeable to him. Many a Harvard student 
who trembled on the brink of an abyss, far 
from home and left to his own devices, after- 
wards looked back to Doctor Peabody's helping 
hand as to the hand of a beneficent providence 
held out to save him from destruction; and 
those whom he was unable to save thought of 
him no less gratefully. 

In the autumn of 1864 a strange sort of stu- 
dent joined the Sophomore class. He soon 
proved that he was one of the best scholars in 
it ; but to judge from his recitations it was long 
since he had been to school or received any 
regular instruction. He lived chiefly on bread 
and milk, and seemed not to have learned how 
to take exercise. It is feared that he suffered 
much from loneliness in that busy hive, where 
everyone has so many small affairs of his own 
to attend to. Just before the annual examina- 



THE CLOSE OF THE WAR 35 

tions lie was seized with brain-fever and died. 
Doctor Peabody conducted the funeral services 
at the boarding-house of the unfortunate youth, 
and the plainness of the surroundings height- 
ened the eloquence of his address. His prayer 
on that occasion was so much above the average 
character of his religious discourses that it 
seemed to come from a secret fountain of the 
man's nature, which could only be drawn upon 
for great occasions. 

With all his tenderness of feeling Doctor 
Peabody could be a very vigorous debater. He 
once carried on a newspaper argument with 
Kev. Dr. Minor, of Boston, on the temperance 
question, in which he took the ground that 
drinking wine and beer did not necessarily lead 
to intemperance, — which, rightly considered, 
indicates a lack of self-control; and he made 
this point in what his friends, at least, consid- 
ered a satisfactory and conclusive manner. 

It is pleasant to think that such a man should 
have met with unusual prosperity in his old age 
— and the person to whom he owed this im- 
provement of his affairs was Nathaniel Thayer, 
of Boston. Mr. Thayer took charge of Doctor 
Peabody 's property and trebled or quadrupled 
it in value. Mr. Thayer was very fond of doing 
such kindnesses to his friends, especially to 
clergymen. He liked the society of clergymen, 
and certainly in this he showed excellent judg- 



36 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

ment. During the last ten years of his life he 
spent his summers at the Isles of Shoals, and 
generally with one or more reverend gentlemen 
in his company. He was besides a most munifi- 
cent patron of the university. He provided the 
means for Agassiz to go on his expedition to 
South America, and in conjunction with Doctor 
Hill reestablished commons for the students — 
a reform, as he once stated, as advantageous to 
their morals as to their purses. He afterwards 
built the dormitory which is known by his name. 
He was so kind-hearted, that he was said to 
have given up banking because he was not 
hard-hearted enough for the profession. After 
his death his family received letters upon let- 
ters from persons of whom they had never 
heard, but who wished to express their grati- 
tude for his generosity. 

Prof. Benjamin Pierce, the mathematician, 
was rather an awe-inspiring figure as he strolled 
through the college grounds, recognizing few 
and speaking to none — apparently oblivious to 
everything except the internal life which he 
led in the ' ^ functions of curves ' ' and ' ' celestial 
mechanics.'' He was a fine-looking man, with 
his ashen-gray hair and beard, his wide brow 
and features more than usually regular. When 
he was observed conversing with President Hill 
the fine scholars shook their heads wisely as if 
something remarkable was taking place. The 



THE CLOSE OF THE WAR 37 

president had said in one of his addresses to 
the Freshmen that it would require a whole 
generation to utilize Professor Pierce's dis- 
coveries in algebra; and I believe, at last 
accounts, they have not been utilized yet. He 
would often be seen in the horse-cars making 
figures on scraps of paper, which he carried 
with him for the purpose, oblivious as ever to 
what was taking place about him. To ^'have 
a head like old Benny Pierce" has become a 
proverb in Boston and Cambridge. 

Neither did he lack independence of char- 
acter. In his later years he not unfrequently 
attended the meetings of the Radical Club, or 
Chestnut Street Club, at Mrs. John T. Sar- 
gent's, in Boston, — a place looked upon with 
piour horror by good Doctor Peabody, and 
equally discredited by the young positivists 
whom President Eliot had introduced in the 
college faculty. His remarks on such occa- 
sions were fresh, original, and very interest- 
ing; and once he brought down the house with 
laughter and applause by explaining the men- 
tal process which prevented him from appre- 
ciating a joke until after all others had done so. 
This naive confession made his audience like 
him. 

It is a curious geneological fact that Pro- 
fessor Pierce had a son named after him who 
would seem to have been born in mirth, to have 



38 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

lived in comedy, and died in a jest. He was a 
college Yorick who produced roars of laughter 
in the Dicky and Hasty Pudding clubs. An- 
other son, called affectionately by the students 
''Jimmy Mills," was also noted for his wit, and 
much respected as an admirable instructor. 

Doctor Holmes says, in Parson TurelPs 
Legacy : 

" Know old Cambridge ? Hope you do. — 
Bom there ? Don't say so ! I was too. 
(Born in a house with a gambrel-roof, — 
Standing still, if you must have proof. — 

— Nicest place that ever was seen, — 
Colleges red and Common green, 
Sidewalks brownish with trees between." 

This describes Cambridge as it was forty 
years since. In spite of its timid conservatism 
and rather donnish society, as Professor Child 
termed it, it was one of the pleasantest places 
to live in on this side the Atlantic. It was a 
community of a refined and elegant industry, in 
which every one had a definite work to do, and 
seemed to be exactly fitted to his or her place, — 
not without some great figures, too, to give it 
exceptional interest. There was peace and re- 
pose under the academic shade, and the obliv- 
iousness of its inhabitants to the outside world 
only rendered this more restful. 



THE CLOSE OF THE WAR 39 

How changed is it now! The old Holmes 
house has been long since pulled down to make 
way for the new Law-School building. Red- 
gravel paths have been replaced by brick side- 
walks ; huge buildings rise before the eye ; elec- 
tric cars whiz in every direction; a tall, bris- 
tling iron fence surrounds the college yard; 
and an enormous clock on the tower of Memo- 
rial Hall detonates the hours in a manner which 
is by no means conducive to the sleep of the 
just and the rest of the weary. The elderly 
graduate, returning to the dreamland of his 
youth, finds that it has actually become a dream- 
land and still exists only in his imagination. 

The university has broadened and extended 
itself wonderfully under the present manage- 
ment, but the simple classic charm of the olden 
time is gone forever. 



FEANCIS J. CHILD 

Fifty years ago it was the fashion at Har- 
vard, as well as at other colleges, for professors 
to cultivate an austere dignity of manner for 
the purpose of preserving order and decorum 
in the recitation-room; but this frequently re- 
sulted in having the opposite effect and served 
as a temptation to the students to play prac- 
tical jokes on their instructors. The habitual 
dryness of the college exercises in Latin, Greek, 
and mathematics became still more wearisome 
from the manner in which these were conducted. 
The youthful mind thirsting for knowledge 
found the road to it for the most part a dull and 
dreary pilgrimage. 

Professor Francis J. Child would seem to 
have been the first to break down this barrier 
and establish more friendly relations with his 
classes. He was naturally well adapted to this. 
Perfectly frank and fearless in his dealings 
with all men, he hated unnecessary convention- 
ality, and at the same time possessed the rare 
art of preserving his dignity while associating 
with his subordinates on friendly terms. 
Always kindly and even sympathetic to the 
worst scapegraces in the division, he could 
assert the superiority of his position with a 

40 



FRANCIS J. CHILD 41 

quickness that often startled those who were 
inclined to impose on him. He did not call out 
the names of his class as if they were excep- 
tions to a rule in Latin grammar, but addressed 
each one of them as if he felt a personal interest 
in the man; so that they felt encouraged to 
speak out what they knew and even remembered 
their lessons so much the better. As a conse- 
quence he was universally respected, and there 
were many who felt an affection for him such 
as he could never have imagined. His cordial 
manner was sufficient of itself to make his in- 
struction effective. 

Francis J. Child was the first scholar in his 
class at the Boston Latin School, and after- 
wards at Harvard. That first scholars do not 
come to much good in the world is an illusion 
of the envious. It is true that they sometimes 
break down their health by too strenuous an 
effort, but this may happen to an ambitious 
person in any undertaking. In Professor 
Child's case, as in many another, it proved the 
making of his fortune, for which he did not pos- 
sess any exceptional advantages. Being of an 
amiable disposition and good address, he was 
offered a tutorship on graduation, and rose 
from one position in the university to another 
until he became the first authority on the Eng- 
lish language in America. His whole life was 
spent at Harvard College, with the exception 



42 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

of a few short expeditions to Europe ; and his 
influence there steadily increased until it 
became a power that was universally recog- 
nized. 

He was a short, thick-set man, like Sophocles, 
but as different as possible in general aspect. 
Sophocles was always slow and measured, but 
Professor Child was quick and lively in all his 
movements ; and his face wore an habitual 
cheerfulness which plainly showed the sunny 
spirit within. Most characteristic in his ap- 
pearance was the short curly yellow hair, so 
light in color that when it changed with age, his 
friends scarcely noticed the difference. 

During his academic years he created a sen- 
sation by declining to join the Hasty Pudding 
Club. This was looked upon as a piece of inor- 
dinate self-conceit; whereas, the true reason 
for it was that he had little money and pre- 
ferred to spend it in going to the theatre. He 
said afterwards, in regard to this, that he was 
not sorry to have done it, for ^^the students 
placed too much importance on such matters. ' ' 

Through his interest in fine acting, he became 
one of the best judges of oratory, and it was 
always interesting to listen to him on that sub- 
ject. He considered Wendell Phillips the per- 
fection of form and delivery, and sometimes 
very brilliant, but much too rash in his state- 
ments. Everett was also good, but lacked 



FRANCIS J. CHILD 43 

warmth and earnestness. Clioate was purely a 
legal pleader, and outside of the court-room 
not very effective. He thought Webster one of 
the greatest of orators, fully equal to Cicero; 
but they both lacked the poetical element. 
Sumner's sentences were florid and his deliv- 
ery rather mechanical, but he made a strong 
impression owing to the evident purity of his 
motives. The general public, however, had be- 
come suspicious of oratory, so that it was no 
longer as serviceable as formerly. 

'^ After all," he would say, ''the main point 
for a speaker is to have a good cause. Then, if 
he is thoroughly in earnest, we enjoy hearing 
him.'' He once illustrated his subject by the 
story of a Union general who tried to rally the 
fugitives at Pittsburg Landing, and said, 
waving his sword in the air : " In the name of 
the Declaration of Independence, I command, I 
exhort you," etc., while a private soldier lean- 
ing against a tree, with a quid of tobacco in his 
mouth, remarked, ' ' That man can make a good 
speech," but showed no intentions of moving. 
This summary, however, gives no adequate idea 
of the brightness of Professor Child's conver- 
sation. He was an animated talker, full of wit 
and originality. 

When the classes at Harvard were smaller 
than at present, he would arrange them in Uni- 
versity Hall for declamation, so as to cover as 



44 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

much space as possible. They did not under- 
stand this until he said, * * Now we have a larger 
audience, if not more numerous;'' and this 
placed every one in the best of humor. 

Besides his regular college duties, Professor 
Child had three distinct interests to which he 
devoted himself in leisure hours with all the 
energy of an ardent nature. The first of these, 
editing a complete edition of the old English 
ballads, was the labor of his life, and with it 
his name will always be associated, for it is a 
work that can neither be superseded nor ex- 
celled. He was the first to arouse English 
scholars to the importance of this, as may be 
read in the dedication of a partial edition taken 
from the Percy manuscripts and published in 
London in 1861. He recognized in them the 
true foundation of the finest literature of the 
modern world, and he considered them so much 
the better from the fact that they were not com- 
posed to be printed, but to be recited or sung. 
Matthew Arnold wrote in a letter from Amer- 
ica: ''After lecturing at Taunton, I came to 
Boston with Professor Child of Harvard, a very 
pleasant man, who is a great authority on 
ballad poetry," very warm praise, considering 
the source whence it came. Late in life Pro- 
fessor Child edited separate versions in modern 
English of some curious old ballads, and sent 
them as Christmas presents to his friends. 



FRANCIS J. CHILD 45 

It is not surprising that he should have been 
interested as well in the rude songs of the 
British sailors, which he heard on crossing the 
ocean. He was mightily amused at their simple 
refrain : 

" Haul in the bowlin', long-tailed bowlin', 
Haul in the bowlin' Kitty, 0, my darlin'." 

'*That rude couplet," he said, ^^ contains all 
the original elements of poetry. Firstly, the 
anthropomorphic element; the sailor imagines 
his bowline as if it had life. Secondly, the 
humorous element, for the bowline is all tail. 
Thirdly, the reflective element ; the monotonous 
motion makes him think of home, — of his wife 
or sweetheart, — and he ends the second line 
with 'Kitty, 0, my darlin'.' I like such primi- 
tive verses much better than the 'Pike County 
Ballads,' a mixture of sentiment and profan- 
ity.'' 

Then he went on to say : ' ' I want my children, 
when they grow up, to read the classics. My 
boy will go to college, of course; and he will 
translate Homer and Virgil, and Horace, — I 
think very highly of Horace; but the literal 
meaning is a different thing from understand- 
ing the poetry. Then my daughters will learn 
French and German, and I shall expect them to 
read Schiller and Goethe, Moliere and Racine, 



46 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

as well as Shakespeare and Milton. After that 
they can read what they like, but they will have 
a standard by which to judge other authors.'' 
He was afraid that the students wasted too 
much time in painting play-bills and other 
similar exercises of ingenuity, which lead to 
nothing in the end. 

He gave some excellent advice to a young 
lady who was about visiting Europe for the 
first time, who doubted if she could properly 
appreciate the works of art and other fine 
things that she would be called upon to admire. 
^' Don't be afraid of that," said Professor 
Child; ''you will probably like best just those 
sights which you do not expect to ; but if you 
do not like them, say so, and let that be the end 
of it. Now, I am so unfortunate as not to appre- 
ciate Michel Angelo. His great horned Moses 
is nothing more to me than a Silenus in a gar- 
den. The fact does not trouble me much, for I 
find enough to interest me as it is, and I can 
enjoy life without the Moses." 

After mentioning a number of desirable ex- 
peditions, he added: ''You will go to Dresden, 
of course, to see Raphael's Madonna and 
Titian's 'Tribute Money'; and then there are 
the Green Vaults. I have known the Green 
Vaults to have an excellent effect on some 
ladies of my acquaintance. They did not care 
one-quarter as much for a diamond ring as they 



FRANCIS J. CHILD 47 

did before they went into the Green Vaults. 

i You will see a jewelled fireplace there which is 
worth more than all I own in the world. ' ' The 
young lady looked, however, as if it would take 
more than the Green Vaults to cure her love for 

j jewelry. 

I Professor Child's second important interest 
: was politics, and as a rule he much preferred 
talking on this to literary subjects. 
I Josiah Quincy was the most distinguished 
\ president that Harvard College has had, unless 
I we except President Eliot ; and his admirers 
I have been accustomed to refer to his adminis- 
j tration as ''Consule Planco." His politics did 
; not differ widely from those of John Quincy 
i Adams, who was the earliest statesman of the 
anti-slavery struggle, and a true hero in his 
way. After Quincy, the presidents of the uni- 
versity became more and more conservative, 
until Felton, who was a pronounced pro-slavery 
Whig, and even attempted to defend the in- 
[ vasion of Kansas in a public meeting. The 
j professors and tutors naturally followed in the 
j train of the president, while a majority of the 
I sons of wealthy men among the undergraduates 
always took the southern side. The son of an 
abolitionist who wished to go through Harvard 
in those days found it a penitential pilgrimage. 
He was certain to suffer an extra amount of 



48 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

hazing, and to endure a kind of social ostracism 
throughout the course. 

For many years before the election of Lin- 
coln, Professors Child, Lowell, and Jennison 
were the only pronounced anti-slavery members 
of the faculty ; and this left Francis J. Child to 
bear the brunt of it almost alone, for LowelPs 
connection with the university was semi- 
detached, and although he was always prepared 
to face the enemy in an honest argument, he 
was not often on the ground to do so. 

Now that the most potent cause of political 
agitation resides in the far-off problem of the 
Philippine Islands it is difficult to realize the 
popular excitement of those times, when both 
parties believed that the very existence of the 
nation depended on the result of the elections. 
Professor Child was not the least of an alarm- 
ist, and deprecated all unnecessary controversy. 
In 1861 he even cautioned Wendell Phillips 
Garrison against introducing too strong an 
appeal for emancipation in his commencement 
address; but he was as firm as a granite rock 
on any question of principle, and when he con- 
sidered a protest in order he was certain to 
make one. He did not trust party newspapers 
for his information, but obtained it from per- 
sons who were in a position to know, and his 
facts were so well supported by the quick sallies 
of his wit that those who interfered with him 




PROFESSOR FRANCIS J. CHILD 



FRANCIS J. CHILD 49 

once rarely attempted it again. Moreover, as 
we all see now, he had the right on his side. 

He was proud of having voted twice for 
Abraham Lincoln. What he thought of John 
Brown, at the time of the Harper's Ferry raid, 
is uncertain; but many years later, when one 
of his friends published a small book in vindi- 
cation of Brown against the attack of Lincoln's 
two secretaries, he wrote to him : 

^'I congratulate you on the success of your 
statement, which I have read with very great 
interest. John Brown was like a star and still 
shines in the firmament. We could not have 
done without him." 

He considered Grovernor Andrew's approba- 
tion of John Brown as more important than 
anything that would be written about him in 
the future. 

He did not trouble himself much in regard to 
Lincoln's second election, for he saw that it was 
a foregone conclusion ; but after Andrew John- 
son 's treachery in 1866, he felt there was a 
need of unusual exertion. When the November 
elections arrived, he told his classes: '^Next 
Tuesday I shall have to serve my country and 
there will be no recitations." When Tuesday 
came we found him on the sidewalk distributing 
Republican ballots and soliciting votes; and 
there he remained until the polls closed in the 
afternoon. He had little patience with educated 

4 



50 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

men who neglected their political duties. '^Why- 
are you discouraged f he would ask. ''Times 
will change. Eemember the Free-soil move- 
ment!'' He attended caucuses as regularly as 
the meetings of the faculty, and served as a 
delegate to a number of conventions. More 
than once he aroused the good citizens of 
Cambridge to the danger of insidious plots 
by low demagogues against the public wel- 
fare. The poet Longfellow took notice of this 
and spoke of him as an invaluable man. 

On another occasion Professor Child was 
discoursing to his class on oratory and men- 
tioned the fact that Webster and Choate both 
came from Dartmouth; that Wendell Phillips 
graduated at Harvard, but the university had 
not seen much of him since. At the mention 
of Wendell Phillips some of the boys from pro- 
slavery families began to sneer. Professor 
Child raised himself up and said determinedly, 
''Wendell Phillips is as good an orator as either 
of them!" He was chagrined, however, at 
Phillips's later public course, — his support of 
Socialism and General Butler. Neither did he 
like Phillips's Phi Beta Kappa oration, in 
which he advocated the dagger and dynamite 
for tyrants. "A tyrant," said Professor Child, 
' ' is what anyone chooses to imagine. My hired 
man may consider me a tyrant and blow me up 
according to Mr. Phillips's principle." The 



FRANCIS J. CHILD 51 

assassins of Garfield and McKinley evidently 
supposed that they were ridding the earth of 
two of the worst tyrants that ever existed. Pro- 
fessor Child was exceptionally liberal. He 
even supported Woman Suffrage for a time, 
but he held Socialism in a kind of holy horror, 
— such as one feels of a person who is always 
making blunders. 

In 1878 Professor Child and some other 
political reformers were elected to a Congres- 
sional convention and went with the hope of 
securing a candidate who would represent the 
educated classes, — the incumbent at that time 
being a shoe manufacturer. They argued and 
worked hard all day, but without success. Late 
in the afternoon the shoe manufacturer, a 
worthy man but very ignorant, who afterwards 
became governor of the State, was renomi- 
nated; and when it was proposed to make the 
nomination unanimous Professor Child called 
out such an emphatic No that it seemed to shake 
the whole assembly. Not content with this he 
entered a protest next day in the Boston Adver- 
tiser. He was so much used up by the exertion 
that he was unable to attend to his classes. 
Some years later he enjoyed the satisfaction of 
seeing his candidate, Theodore Lyman, nomi- 
nated and elected. 

Emerson once delivered a lecture in Boston 
on university life in which he made the rather 



52 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

bold statement that '4n the course of twenty 
years the rank-list is likely to become in- 
verted.'' One of Professor Child's class para- 
phrased this lecture for a theme, and against 
the sentence above quoted the Professor wrote : 
**A statement frequently made, but what is the 
fact?" I do not think he liked Emerson quite 
so well after this, and he can hardly be blamed 
for feeling so. It was not only a disparage- 
ment of good scholarship but like a personal 
slight upon himself. That Emerson graduated 
near the foot of his class ought not to prove 
that an idle college life is a sign of genius. 

Professor Child talked freely in regard to 
the meetings of the college faculty, for he 
believed that graduates had a right to know 
about them. He quoted some amusing anec- 
dotes of a certain professor who led the oppo- 
sition against President Eliot and praised the 
dignified manner with which Eliot regarded 
him. In 1879 he said one day : 

^'We are in the half-way stage between a col- 
lege and a university, and there is consequently 
great confusion. If we once became a univer- 
sity, pure and simple, all that would be over; 
but the difficulty is that the material which 
comes to us is so poor. I do not mean that 
the young men are lacking in intelligence, but 
the great majority of them do not brace them- 
selves to the work. As Doctor Hedge says, the 



FRANCIS J. CHILD 53 

heart of the college is in the boating and ball- 
playing and not in its studies.'^ 

His third occupation and chief recreation 
was his rose-garden. The whole space between 
his front piazza and Kirkland Street was filled 
with rose-bushes which he tended himself, from 
the first loosening of the earth in spring until 
the straw sheaf-caps were tied about them in 
November. What more delightful occupation 
for a scholar than working in a rose-garden! 
There his friends were most likely to find him 
in suitable weather, and when June came they 
were sure to receive a share of the bountiful 
blossoms ; nor did he ever forget the sick and 
suffering. 

He was greatly interested to hear of a Ger- 
man doctor at Munich who had a rose-garden 
with more than a hundred varieties in it. '^I 
should like to know that man," he said; 
^^ wouldn't we have a good talk together?'' He 
complained that although everybody liked roses 
few were sufficiently interested in them to dis- 
tinguish the different kinds. Naturally rose- 
bugs were his special detestation. ''Saving 
your presence," he said to President Felton's 
daughter, ''I will crush this insect;" to which 
she aptly replied, ''I certainly would not have 
my presence save him." When he heard of the 
Buffalo-bug he exclaimed: ''Are we going to 
have another pest to contend with? I think it 



54 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

is a serious question whether the insect world 
is not going to get the better of us.'' 

After his painful death at the Massachusetts 
Hospital in September, 1896, the president and 
fellows of the university voted to set apart 
little Holden Chapel, the oldest building on the 
college grounds, and yet one of the most digni- 
fied, for an English library dedicated to the 
memory of Francis J. Child. Such an honor 
had never been decreed for president or pro- 
fessor before ; and it gives him the distinction 
that we all feel he deserved. It is much more 
appropriate to him, and satisfactory than a 
marble statue in Saunders Theatre would have 
been, or a stained-glass window in Memorial 
Hall. Yet his presence still lingers in the mem- 
ory of his friends, like the fragrance of his own 
roses, after the petals have fallen from their 
stems. 



LONGFELLOW 

It has been estimated that there were four 
hundred poets in England in the time of 
Shakespeare, and in the century during which 
Dante lived Europe fairly swarmed with poets, 
many of them of high excellence. Frederick II. 
of Germany and Richard I. of England were 
both good poets, and were as proud of their 
verses as they were of their military exploits. 
Frederick 11. may be said to have founded the 
vernacular in which Dante wrote; and Long- 
fellow rendered into English a poem of Rich- 
ard's which he composed during his cruel im- 
prisonment in Austria. A knight who could 
not compose a song and sing it to the guitar 
was as rare as a modern gentleman of fashion 
who cannot play golf. When James Russell 
Lowell resigned the chair of poetry at Harvard 
no one could be found who could exactly fill his 
place, and it was much the same at Oxford after 
Matthew Arnold retired. 

The difference between then and now would 
seem to reside in the fact, that poetry is more 
easily remembered than prose. From the time 
of Homer until long after the invention of 
printing, not only were ballad-singers and harp- 
ers in good demand, but the recital of poetry 

66 



56 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

was also a favorite means of livelihood to indi- 
gent scholars and others, who wandered about 
like the minstrels. The ^^ article/' as Tom 
Moore called it, was in active request. Poetry 
was recited in the camp of Alexander, in the 
Roman baths, in the castles on the Rhine, and 
English hostelries. Now it is replaced by novel- 
reading, and there are few who know how much 
pleasure can be derived on a winter's evening 
by impromptu poetic recitations. If a popular 
interest in poetry should revive again, I have 
no doubt that hundreds of poets would spring 
up, as it were, out of the ground and fill the air 
with their pleasant harmonies. The editor of 
the Atlantic informed Professor Child that he 
had a whole barrelful of poetry in his house, 
much of it excellent, but that there was no use 
he could make of it. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was as irre- 
pressible a rhymer as John Watts himself, and 
fortunately he had a father who recognized the 
value of his talent and assisted him in a judi- 
cious manner, instead of placing obstacles in 
his way, as the father of Watts is supposed to 
have done. The account that Rev. Samuel 
Longfellow has given us of the youth of his 
brother is highly instructive, and ought to be 
of service to all young men who fancy they are 
destined by nature for a poetic career. He tells 
us how Henry published his first poem in the 



LONGFELLOW 57 

Portland Gazette, and how his boyish exultation 
was dashed with cold water the same evening by 

Judge , who said of it in his presence: 

^^ Stiff, remarkably stiff, and all the figures are 
borrowed.'^ 

The ''Fight at LovelPs Pond'' would not 
have been a remarkable poem for a youth of 
nineteen, but it showed very good promise for 
the age at which it was written. Few boys at 
that age can write anything that will hang 
together as a poem. Young Longfellow was a 
better poet at thirteen than his father's friend, 
the Judge, was a critic. His verses were by no 
means stiff, but on the contrary showed indica- 
tions of that natural grace and facility of ex- 
pression for which he became afterwards dis- 
tinguished. As for the originality of his 
comparisons it is doubtful also if the Judge 
could have proved his point on that question. 
They were original to Henry, if to nobody else. 

Fortunately for Henry he was also a fine 
scholar. The following year saw him enter as 
a Freshman at Bowdoin College, which was 
equal to entering Harvard at the age of fif- 
teen. Look out for the youngest members of a 
college class ! They may not distinguish them- 
selves at the university, but they are the ones 
who, if they live, outstrip all others. But Long- 
fellow did distinguish himself. In his Junior 
year he composed seventeen poems which were 



58 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

published, then and afterwards, in the United 
States Literary Gazette, where his name ap- 
peared beside that of William Cullen Bryant. 
This was quite exceptional in the history of 
American literature, and as the editor of the 
Literary Gazette stated it: '^A young tree 
which puts forth so many blossoms is likely to 
bear good fruits. '^ 

With the close of his college course came the 
important question of Longfellow's future 
occupation. His father, with good practical 
judgment, foresaw that poetry alone would not 
serve to make his son self-supporting and inde- 
pendent ; but the boy hated to give this up for 
a more prosaic emplojonent. While the discus- 
sion was going on between them, the authorities 
of Bowdoin solved the problem for them both 
by offering young Longfellow a professorship 
of modern languages on condition that he would 
spend two years in Europe preparing himself 
for the position. He had graduated fourth in 
his class. 

Does not this prove the advantage of good 
scholarship? Was the rank list inverted in 
Longfellow's case? I think not. He had lived 
a virtuous and industrious life, not studying 
for rank or honor, but because he enjoyed doing 
what was right and fit for a young man to do ; 
and now the reward had come to him, like the 
sun breaking through the clouds which seemed 



LONGFELLOW 59 

to obscure his future prospects. Still, there 
was a hard road before him. It is very pleasant 
to travel rapidly through foreign countries, 
seeing the best that is in them and to return 
home with a multitude of fresh impressions; 
but living and working a long time in another 
country seems too much like exile. The lone- 
liness of the situation becomes a weary burden, 
and it is dangerous from its very loneliness. 
Many have died or lost their health under such 
conditions (in fact Longfellow came near losing 
his life from Roman fever), and he wrote from 
Paris: ''Here one can keep evil at a dis- 
tance as well as elsewhere, though, to be sure, 
temptations are multiplied a thousand-fold if 
he is willing to enter into them." A young 
man's first experience in London or Paris is a 
dangerous sense of freedom; for all the cus- 
tomary restraints of his daily life have been 
removed. 

Mrs. Stowe says of her beautiful character, 
''Eva St. Clair," that all bad influences rolled 
otf from her like dew from a cabbage leaf, and 
it was the same with Longfellow throughout. 
He lived in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany, 
and then returned to Portland, the same true 
American as when he left there, without foreign 
ways or modes of thinking, and with no more 
than the slight aroma of a foreign air upon 
him. Longfellow and his whole family were 



60 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

natural cosmopolitans. There was nothing 
of the proverbial Yankee in their compo- 
sition. 

Whittier was a Quaker by creed, but he was 
also much of a Yankee in style and manner. 
Emerson looked like a Yankee, and possessed 
the cool Yankee shrewdness. Lowell's ^'Big- 
low Papers'' testified to the fundamental 
Yankee; but the Longfellows were endowed 
with a peculiar refinement and purity which 
seemed to distinguish them as much in Cam- 
bridge or London as it did in Portland, where 
there has always been a rather superior sort of 
society. It was like French refinement without 
being Gallic. No wonder that a famous poet 
should emanate from such a family. 

What we notice especially in the Longfellow 
Letters during this European sojourn is the 
admonition of Henry's father, that German lit- 
erature was more important than Italian, — and 
the poet was always largely influenced by this 
afterwards ; that Henry did not find Paris par- 
ticularly attractive, and on the whole preferred 
the Spanish character to the French on account 
of its deeper under-currents ; that he did not 
seem to realize the danger that menaced him 
from Spanish brigands, in spite of the black 
crosses by the roadside; and that he was not 
vividly impressed by the famous works of art 
in the Louvre gallery. He only notices that one 



LONGFELLOW 61 

of Correggio's figures resembles a young lady 
in Portland. 

Longfellow would seem to have been always 
the same in regard to his appreciation of art. 
When he was in Italy, in 1869, he visited all the 
picture galleries and evidently enjoyed doing 
so ; but it was easy to see that his brother, Eev. 
Samuel Longfellow, felt a much livelier interest 
in the subject than he did ; and injured frescos 
or mutilated statues, like the Torso of the Bel- 
videre, were objects of aversion to him. Poets 
and musical composers see more with their ears 
than they do with their eyes. 

The single work of art that attracted him 
strongly at this time was a statue of Venus, by 
Canova, which he compares to the Venus de' 
Medici, and his brother Samuel remarks that 
he was always more attracted by sculpture 
than painting. Canova was a genius very simi- 
lar to Longfellow himself, as nearly as an Ital- 
ian could be made to match an American, and 
he was then at the height of his reputation. 

In 1829 Longfellow returned to Portland and 
was immediately chosen a professor at Bowdoin 
College, where he remained for the next seven 
years. When, in 1836, Professor Ticknor re- 
tired from his position as instructor of modern 
languages at Harvard, his place was offered to 
Longfellow and accepted. This brought him 
into the literary centre of New England, and 



62 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

one of the first acquaintances he made there 
was Charles Sumner, who was lecturing before 
the Harvard Law-School. 

The friendship between these two great men 
commenced at once and only ceased at Sum- 
ner's death in 1874, when Longfellow wrote one 
of the finest of his shorter poems in tribute to 
Sumner's memory. It was as poetic a friend- 
ship as that between Emerson and Carlyle ; but 
whereas Emerson and Carlyle had differences 
of opinion, Sumner and Longfellow were 
always of one mind. When Sumner made his 
Fanueil Hall speech against the fugitive slave 
law, which was simply fighting revolution with 
revolution, and Harvard College and the whole 
of Cambridge turned against him, Longfellow 
stood firm; and it may be suspected that he 
had many an unpleasant discussion with his 
aristocratic acquaintances on this point. It was 
considered bad enough to support Garrison, 
but supporting Sumner was a great deal worse, 
for Sumner was an orator who wielded a power 
only inferior to Webster. Fortunately for 
Longfellow, his connection with the university 
ceased not long after Sumner's election to the 
Senate ; and the unpleasantness of his position 
may have been the leading cause of his retire- 
ment. 

Sumner was the best friend Longfellow had, 
and perhaps the best that he could have had. 



LONGFELLOW 63 

There was Emerson, of course, and Longfellow 
was always on friendly terms with him; but 
Emerson had a habit of catechising his com- 
panions which some of them did not altogether 
like; and this may have been the case with 
Longfellow, for they never became very inti- 
mate. Sumner, on the contrary, had always a 
large stock of information to dispense, not only 
concerning American affairs but those of other 
nations, in which Longfellow never lost his in- 
terest. More important to him even than this 
is the fact that Sumner's statements were 
I always to be trusted. It may be surmised that 
I it was not so much similarity of opinion as the 
I purity of their motives that brought the poet 
[ and statesman together. 

I As soon as Sumner returned from Washing- 
ton, in spring or summer, he would go out to 
j call on Longfellow ; and it was a pleasant sight 
. to see them walking together on a June evening 
! beneath the overarching elms of historic Brattle 
I Street. They were a pair of majestic-looking 
; men ; and though Longfellow was nearly a head 
j shorter than Sumner, his broad shoulders gave 
i him an appearance of strength, as his capacious 
j head and strong, finely cut features evidently 
I denoted an exceptional intellect. He wore his 
I hair poetically long, almost to his coat collar; 
I and yet there was not the slightest air of the 
Bohemian about him. They seemed to be obliv- 



64 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

ious of everything except their conversation; 
and if this could have been recorded it might 
prove to be as interesting as the poetry of the 
one and the orations of the other. They were 
evidently talking on great subjects, and the 
earnestness on Sumner's face was reflected on 
Longfellow's as in a mirror. 

Hawthorne was a classmate of Longfellow, 
and in the biography of the latter there are a 
number of letters from one to the other which 
are always friendly, — but never more than that 
on Hawthorne's side, — with one exception, 
where he thanks Longfellow for a compliment- 
ary review of '^Twice-Told Tales" in the 
North American. At that time the North 
American was considered an authority which 
could make or unmake an author's reputation; 
and Longfellow may be said to have opened the 
door for Hawthorne into the great world. 
Hawthorne's friendship for President Pierce 
proved an advantage to him financially, but it 
also became a barrier between him and the 
other literary men of his time. Of course he 
believed what his friend Pierce told him con- 
cerning public affairs, and when he found that 
his other friends had not the same faith in 
Pierce's veracity he became more strongly a 
partisan of the pro-slavery cause on that ac- 
count. Longfellow frankly admitted that he 
did not understand Hawthorne, and he did not 



LONGFELLOW 65 

believe that anyone at Bowdoin College under- 
stood him. He was the most secretive man that 
he ever knew; but so far as genius was con- 
cerned, he believed that Hawthorne would out- 
live every other writer of his time. He had 
the will of a great conqueror. 

Goethe has been called the pampered child 
of genius, of fortune, and the muse; but if 
Goethe had greater celebrity he never enjoyed 
half the worldly prosperity of Longfellow. 
While Emerson was earning a hard livelihood 
by lecturing in the West, and Whittier was 
dwelling in a country farm-house, Longfellow 
occupied one of the most desirable residences 
in or about Boston, and had all the means at 
his command that a modest man could wish for. 
i; The Craigie House was, and still remains, the 
I finest residence in Cambridge, — '^formerly the 
I head-quarters of Washington, and afterwards 
I of the Muses.'' Good architecture never 
I becomes antiquated, and the Craigie House is 
I not only spacious within, but dignified without. 
One could best realize Longfellow's opulence 
by walking through his library adjacent to the 
eastern piazza, and gazing at the magnificent 
editions of foreign authors which had been pre- 
sented to him by his friends and admirers ; espe- 
cially the fine set of Chateaubriand's works, in 
all respects worthy of a royal collection. There 



ee CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

is no ornament in a house that testifies to the 
quality of the owner like a handsome library. 

Byron would seem to have been the only other 
poet that has enjoyed such prosperity, although 
Bryant, as editor of a popular newspaper, may 
have approached it closely; but a city house, 
with windows on only two sides, is not like a 
handsome suburban residence. Longfellow 
could look across the Cambridge marshes and 
see the sunsets reflected in the water of the 
Charles River. 

Here he lived from 1843, when he married 
Miss Appleton, a daughter of one of the wealth- 
iest merchant-bankers of Boston, until his death 
by pneumonia in March, 1882. The situation 
seemed suited to him, and he always remained 
a true poet and devoted to the muses : 

Integer vitae scelerisque purus. 

He did not believe in a luxurious life except 
so far as luxury added to refinement, and every- 
thing in the way of fashionable show was very 
distasteful to him. His brother Samuel once 
said, ''I cannot imagine anything more dis- 
agreeable than to ride in a public procession ; ' ' 
and the two men were more alike than brothers 
often are. We notice in the poet's diary that 
he abstains from going to a certain dinner in 
Boston for fear of being called upon to make 
a speech. Craigie House gave Longfellow the 



LONGFELLOW 67 

opportunity in which he most delighted, — of 
entertaining his friends and distinguished for- 
eign guests in a handsome manner ; but conven- 
tional dinner parties, with their fourteen plates 
half surrounded by wine-glasses, were not often 
seen there. He much preferred a smaller num- 
ber of guests with the larger freedom of dis- 
course which accompanies a select gathering. 
Many such occasions are referred to in his 
diary, — as if he did not wish to forget them. 

He was the finest host and story-teller in the 
country. His genial courtesy was simply 
another expression of that mental grace which 
made his reputation as a poet, and his manner 
of reciting an incident, otherwise trivial, would 
give it the same additional quality as in his 
verses on Springfield Arsenal and the crooked 
Songo River, which without Longfellow would 
be little or nothing. Then his fund of informa- 
tion was what might be expected from a man 
who had lived in all the countries of western 
Europe. 

He had humble and unfortunate friends 
whom he seemed to think as much of as though 
they were distinguished. He recognized fine 
traits of character, perhaps real greatness of 
character, in out-of-the-way places, — men whose 
chief happiness was their acquaintance with 
Longfellow. It was something much better than 
charity; and Professor Child spoke of it on 



68 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

the day of Emerson's funeral as the finest 
flower in the poet's wreath. 

Longfellow was one of the kindest friends 
that the Hungarian exiles found when they 
came to Boston in 1852. Longfellow helped 
Kossuth, subscribed to Kalapka's riding-school, 
and entertained a number of them at his house. 
Afterwards, when one of the exiles set up a 
business in Hungarian wines, Longfellow made 
a large purchase of him, which he spoke of 
twenty years later with much satisfaction. He 
liked Tokay, and also the white wine of Capri, 
which he regretted could not be obtained in 
America. 

Those who supposed that Longfellow was 
easily imposed upon made a great mistake. He 
had the reputation among his publishers of 
understanding business affairs better than any 
author in New England ; but he was almost too 
kind-hearted. Somewhere about 1859 a pho- 
tographer made an excellent picture of his 
daughters — indeed, it was a charming group — 
and the man begged Mr. Longfellow for permis- 
sion to sell copies of it as it would be of great 
advantage to him. Longfellow complied and the 
consequence was that in 1860 one could hardly 
open a photograph album anywhere without 
finding Longfellow's daughters in it. Then a 
vulgar story originated that the youngest 
daughter had only one arm, because her left 



LONGFELLOW 69 

arm was hidden behind her sister. It is to be 
hoped that Longfellow never heard of this, for 
if he did it must have caused him a good deal 
of pain, in return for his kindness ; but that is 
what one gets. Fortunately the photographs 
have long since faded out. 

Much in the same line was his interest in the 
children of the poor. A ragged urchin seemed 
to attract him much more than one that was 
nicely dressed. Perhaps they seemed more 
poetic to him, and he could see more deeply into 
the joys and sorrows of their lives. 

Where the Episcopal Theological School now 
stands on Brattle Street there was formerly a 
sort of tenement-house; and one day, as we 
were taking a stroll before dinner, we noticed 
three small boys with dirty faces standing at 
the corner of the building ; and just then one of 
them cried out: ^^Oh, see; here he comes!" 
And immediately Longfellow appeared leaving 
the gate of Craigie House. We passed him be- 
fore he reached the children, but on looking back 
we saw that he had stopped to speak with them. 
They evidently knew him very well. 

It is remarkable how the impression should 
have been circulated that Longfellow was not 
much of a pedestrian. On the contrary, there 
was no one who was seen more frequently on 
the streets of Cambridge. He walked with a 
springy step and a very slight swing of the 



70 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

shoulders, whicli showed that he enjoyed it. He 
may not have walked such long distances as 
Hawthorne, or so rapidly as Dickens, but he 
was a good walker. 

His sister, Mrs. Greenleaf, built a memorial 
chapel in North Cambridge for the Episcopal 
society there, and from this Longfellow formed 
the habit of walking in that direction by way 
of the Botanic Garden. Somewhere in the cross 
streets he became acquainted with two children, 
the son and daughter of a small shop-keeper. 
They, of course, told their mother about their 
white-haired acquaintance, and with the fate of 
Charlie Eoss before her eyes, their mother 
warned them to keep out of his way. He 
might be a tramp, and tramps were dangerous ! 

However, it was not long before the children 
met their white-haired friend again, and the 
boy asked him: ^^Are you a tramp I Mother 
thinks you're a tramp, and she wants to know 
what your name is.'' It maybe presumed that 
Mr. Longfellow laughed heartily at this mis- 
conception, but he said: ^'I think I may call 
myself a tramp. I tramp a good deal ; but you 
may tell your mother that my name is Henry 
W. Longfellow." He afterwards called on the 
mother in order to explain himself, and to con- 
gratulate her on having such fine children. 

When the Saturday Club, popularly known 
as the Atlantic Club, was organized, one of the 



LONGFELLOW 71 

first subjects of discussion that came up was 
the question of autographs. Emerson said that 
was the way in which he obtained his postage 
stamps ; but Longfellow confessed that he had 
given away a large number of them. And so it 
continued to the end. *^Why should I not do 
it/' he would say, ^'if it gives them pleasured' 
Emerson looked on such matters from the 
stoical point of view as an encouragement to 
I vanity ; but he would have been more politic to 
have gratified his curious, or sentimental ad- 
mirers; for every autograph he gave would 
have made a purchaser for his publishers. 
Harmony did not always prevail in the Sat- 
I urday Club, for politics was the all-embracing 
j, subject in those days and its members repre- 
i sented every shade of political opinion. Emer- 
son, Longfellow, and Lowell were strongly 
anti-slavery, but they differed in regard to 
methods. Lowell was what was then called a 
Seward man, and differed with Emerson in re- 
gard to John Brown, and with Longfellow in 
regard to Sumner. Holmes was still more 
conservative; and Agassiz was a McClellan 
Democrat. William Hunt, the painter, believed 
that the war was caused by the ambition of the 
leading politicians in the North and South. 
Longfellow had the advantage of more direct 
information than the others, and enjoyed the 
continued successes of the Republican party. 



72 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

In the spring of 1866 a number of Southern- 
ers came to Boston to borrow funds in order to 
rehabilitate their plantations, and were intro- 
duced at the Union League Club. Finding 
themselves there in a congenial element they 
made speeches strongly tinged with secession 
doctrines. Sumner, of course, could not let this 
pass without making some protest against it, 
and for this he was hissed. The incident was 
everywhere talked of, and came under discus- 
sion at the next meeting of the Saturday Club. 
Otto Dresel, a German pianist, who had small 
reason for being there, said, '^It was not Mr. 
Sumner ^s politics but his bad manners that 
were hissed.'^ Longfellow set his glass down 
with emphasis, and replied: '^If good manners 
could not say it, thank heaven bad manners 
did;'' and Lowell supported this with some 
pretty severe criticism of the Union League 
Club. In justice to the Union League Club, 
however, it ought to be said that there was 
applause as well as hisses for Sumner. 

Longfellow had a leonine face, but it was that 
of a very mild lion ; one that had never learned 
the use of teeth and claws. Yet those who 
knew him felt that he could roar on occasion, if 
occasion required it. Once at Longfellow's own 
table the conversation chanced upon Goethe, 
and a gentleman present remarked that Goethe 
was in the habit of drinking three bottles of 



LONGFELLOW 73 

hock a day. ^^Who said he didT' inquired the 
poet. ^^It is in Lewes 's biography/' said the 
gentleman. * * I do not believe it, ' ' replied Long- 
fellow, ^ ^unless,'' he added with a laugh, ^^they 
were very small bottles.'' A few days after- 
wards Prof. William James remarked in regard 
to this incident that the story was quite in- 
credible. 

In his youth Longfellow seems to have taken 
to guns and fishing-rods more regularly than 
some boys do, but pity for his small victims 
soon induced him to relinquish the sport. His 
eldest son, Charles, also took to guns very natu- 
rally, and in spite of a severe wound which he 
received from the explosion of a badly loaded 
piece, he finally became one of the most expert 
pigeon-shooters in the State. At the interces- 
sion of his father, who considered the game too 
cruel, he afterwards relinquished this for tar- 
get-shooting, in which he succeeded equally 
well. I was talking one day with him on this 
subject and remarked that I had recently shot 
two crows with my rifle. ^'What did you do it 
for?" interposed his father, in a deprecatory 
tone. So I explained to him that crows were 
outside of the pale of the law; that they not 
only were a pest to the farmers but destroyed 
the eggs and young of singing birds, — in fact, 
they were bold, black robbers, whose livery 
betokened their evil deeds. This evidently in- 



74 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

terested him, and he finally said with a laugh: 
^^If that is the case, we will give you and Charlie 
a commission to exterminate them.'' 

There was a story that when young Nicholas 
Longworth came to Harvard College in the 
autumn of 1862 and called on Mr. Longfellow, 
who had been entertained at his father's house 
in Cincinnati, the poet said to him : " It is worth 
that makes the man; the want of it the fellow^ ^ 
— a compliment that almost dumfounded his 
young acquaintance. It is certain that Long- 
fellow addressed a poem to Mrs. Longworth 
which will be found in the collection of his 
minor poems, and in which he speaks of her 
as — 

" The Queen of the West in her garden dressed, 
By the banks of the beautiful river." 

In the midst of this unrivalled prosperity, 
this distinction of genius, and public and pri- 
vate honor, on the ninth of July, 1861, there 
came one of the most harrowing tragedies that 
has ever befallen a man's domestic life. Long- 
fellow was widowed for the second time, and 
five children were left without a mother. It 
seemed as if Providence had set a limit beyond 
which human happiness could not pass. It was 
after this calamity that Longfellow undertook 
his metrical translation of Dante's ^^Divina 
Commedia, ' ' a much more difficult and laborious 



LONGFELLOW 75 

work than writing original poetry. As his 

I brother said, *'He required an absorbing occu- 
pation to prevent him from thinking of the 
past. ' ' 

No wonder that in later years he said, in his 
exquisite verses on the Mountain of the Holy 

[Cross in Colorado, these pathetic words, **0n 
my heart also there is a cross of snow.'^ 

In Longfellow's diary we meet with the 
names of many books that he read, and these 
as well as the pertinent comments on them tell 
much more of his intellectual life than we derive 
from his letters. ^'Adam Bede," which took 
the world by storm, did not make so much of an 

I impression on him as Hawthorne's ^* Marble 
Faun," which he read through in a day and 

i calls a wonderful book. Of '^Adam Bede" he 
says: ''It is too feminine for a man; too mas- 

I culine for a woman." He says of Dickens, 
after reading ''Barnaby Rudge": ''He is 
always prodigal and ample, but what a set of 

I vagabonds he contrives to introduce us to!" 
"Barnaby Rudge" is certainly the most bohe- 
mian and esoteric of Dickens's novels. He 
liked much better Miss Muloch's "John Hali- 
fax, ' ' — a popular book in its time, but not read 
very much since. He calls Charles Reade a 
clever and amusing writer. We find nothing 
concerning Disraeli, Trollope, or Wilkie Col- 
lins. Neither do we hear of critical and his- 



76 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

torical writers like Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, 
Carlyle, and Fronde. He went, however, to call 
on Carlyle in England, and was greatly im- 
pressed by his conversation. The scope of 
Longfellow's reading does not compare with 
that of Emerson or Marian Evans; but the 
doctors say that ^^ every man of forty knows 
the food that is good for him, ' ' and this is true 
mentally as well as physically. 

He refers more frequently to Tennyson than 
to any other writer, and always in a generous, 
cordial manner. Of the ^^ Idyls of the King'' 
he says that the first and third Idyls could only 
have come from a great poet, but that the sec- 
ond and fourth are not quite equal to the others. 

Once, at his sister's house, he held out a book 
in his hand and said: ^^Here is some of the 
finest dramatic poetry that I have ever read." 
It was Tennyson's ^^ Queen Mary;" but there 
were many who would not have agreed with his 
estimate of it. Rev. Samuel Longfellow con- 
sidered the statement very doubtful. 

In the summer of 1868 Longfellow went to 
Europe with his family to see what Henry 
James calls ^^the best of it." Rev. Samuel 
Longfellow and T. Gr. Appleton accompanied 
the party, which, with the addition of Ernest 
Longfellow's beautiful bride, made a strong 
impression wherever they were seen. In fact 
their tour was like a triumphal procession. 



LONGFELLOW 77 

Lon,2:fellow was everywhere treated with the 
distinction of a famous poet; and his fine ap- 
pearance and dignified bearing increased the 
reputation which had already preceded him. 
His meeting with Tennyson was considered as 
important as the visit of the King of Prussia 
to Napoleon III., and much less dangerous to 
the peace of Europe. It was talked of from 
Edinburgh to Rome. 

Longfellow, however, hated lionizing in all 
its forms, and he avoided ceremonious recep- 
tions as much as possible. He enjoyed the 
entertainment of meeting distinguished people, 
but he evidently preferred to meet them in an 
unconventional manner, and to have them as 
much to himself as possible. Princes and 
savants called on him, but he declined every 
invitation that might tend to give him publicity. 

His facility in the different languages was 
much marvelled at. While he was in Florence 
a delegation from the mountain towns of Tus- 
cany waited upon him and he conversed with 
them in their own dialect, greatly to their sur- 
prise and satisfaction. 

From a number of incidents in this journey, 
related by Eev. Samuel Longfellow, the follow- 
ing has a permanent interest : 

When the party came to Verona in May, 
1869, they found Buskin elevated on a ladder, 
from which he was examining the sculpture on 



78 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

a monument. As soon as he heard that the 
Longfellow party was below, he came down 
and greeted them very cordially. He was 
glad that they had stopped at Verona, which 
was so interesting and so often overlooked; 
he wanted them to observe the sculptures on 
the monument, — the softly-flowing draperies 
which seemed more as if they had been 
moulded with hands than cut with a chisel. 
He then spoke in grievous terms of the recent 
devastation by the floods in Switzerland, which 
had also caused much damage in the plains of 
Lombardy. He thought that reservoirs ought 
to be constructed on the sides of the mountains, 
which would stay the force of the torrents, and 
hold the water until it could be made useful. 
He wished that the Alpine Club would take an 
interest in the matter. After enjoying so much 
in Switzerland it would be only fair for them 
to do something for the benefit of the country. 
Mr. Appleton then said: ^^That is a work for 
government to do;" to which Ruskin replied: 
^ ^ Governments do nothing but fill their pockets, 
and issue this," — taking out a handful of Ital- 
ian paper currency, which was then much below 
par. 

Everyone has his or her favorite poet or 
poets, and it is a common practice with young 
critics to disparage one in order to elevate 



LONGFELLOW 79 

another. Longfellow was the most popular 
American poet of his time, but there were others 
besides Edgar A. Poe who pretended to disdain 
him. I have met more such critics in Cam- 
bridge than in England, Germany, or Italy; 
and the reason was chiefly a political one. At 
a distance Longfellow's politics attracted little 
attention, but in Cambridge they could not help 
being felt. In 1862 a strong movement ema- 
nated from the Harvard Law-School to defeat 
Sumner and Andrew, and the lines became 
drawn pretty sharply. As it happened, the 
prominent conservatives with one or two excep- 
tions all lived to the east and north of the col- 
lege grounds, while Longfellow, Lowell, Doctor 
Francis (who baptized Longfellow's children), 
Prof. Asa Gray, and other liberals lived at the 
west end ; and the local division made the con- 
test more acrimonious. The conservatives 
afterwards felt the bitterness of defeat, and it 
was many years before they recovered from 
this. A resident graduate of Harvard, who was 
accustomed to converse on such subjects as the 
metaphysics of Hamilton's quaternions, once 
said that Longfellow was the paragon of school- 
girls, because he wrote what they would like to 
so much better than they could. This was con- 
temptible enough; but how can one expect a 
man who discourses on the metaphysics of 
Hamilton's quaternions to appreciate Long- 



80 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

fellow's art, or any art pure and simple. 
*' Evangeline, " which is perhaps the finest of 
Longfellow's poems, is not a favorite with 
youthful readers. 

He was greater as a man, perhaps, than as 
a poet. Future ages will have to determine 
this ; but he was certainly one of the best poets 
of his time. Professor Hedge, one of our fore- 
most literary critics, spoke of him as the one 
American poet whose verses sing themselves; 
and with the exception of Bryant's ''Eobert of 
Lincoln," and Poe's ^' Raven," and a few other 
pieces, this may be taken as a judicious state- 
ment. 

Longfellow's unconsciousness is charming, 
even when it seems childlike. As a master 
of verse he has no English rival since Spenser. 
The trochaic meter in which '^Hiawatha" is 
written would seem to have been his own inven- 
tion ; * and is a very agreeable change from 
the perpetual iambics of Byron and Words- 
worth. ^'Evangeline" is perhaps the most suc- 
cessful instance of Greek and Latin hexameter 
being grafted on to an English stem. Matthew 
Arnold considered it too dactylic, but the light- 
ness of its movement personifies the grace of 
the heroine herself. Lines like Virgil 's 

* At least I can remember no other long poem composed 
in it. 



LONGFELLOW 81 

" Illi inter sese multa vi brachia tollunt 
In numerum, versantque tenaci forcipe massam/' 

would not have been suited to the subject. 

It has often been said that ^'Hiawatha'* does 
not represent the red man as he really is, and 
this is true. Neither does Tennyson represent 
the knights of King Arthur's court as they 
were in the sixth century a.d. They are more 
like modern English gentlemen, and when we 
read the German Neibelungen we recognize this 
difference. VirgiPs ^neid does not belong to 
the period of the Trojan war, but this does not 
prevent the ^neid from being very fine poetry. 
The American Indian is not without his poetic 
side, as is proved by the squaw who knelt down 
on a flowery Brussels carpet, and smoothing it 
with her hands, said : ^^Hahnsome! hahnsome! 
heaven no hahnsomer!" There is true poetry 
in this; and so there is in the Indian cradle- 
song: 

" The poor little bee that lives in the tree ; 
The poor little bee that lives in the tree; 
Has but one arrow in his quiver." 

Either of these incidents is sufficient to tes- 
tify to Longfellow's ^ ^ Hiawatha. ' ' 

The best poetry is that which forces itself 
upon our memories, so that it becomes part of 
our life without the least effort of recollection. 
Such are Emerson's ^'Problem," Whittier's 

6 



82 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

^ ^ Barbara Frietchie, ' ' and Longfellow 's ^ ^ Santa 
Filomena. ' ' [ 

" Whene'er a noble deed is wrought, 
Whene'er is spoken a noble thought, 
Our hearts in glad sui-prise 
To higher levels rise." 

], 
Those are fortunate in this life who feel the 
glad surprise of Longfellow. 

^ ^ Hiawatha * ' is equally universal in its appli- 
cation to modern life. The questions of the 
Indian boy and the replies of his nurse, the 
good Nikomis, are not confined to the life of 
the aborigines. Every spirited boy is a Hia- 
watha, and in one form or another goes through 
the same experiences that Longfellow has rep- 
resented with such consummate art in his Amer- 
ican epic-idyl. 



LOWELL 

The Lowell family of Boston crossed over 
from England towards the middle of the seven- 
teenth century. One of their number after- 
wards founded the city of Lowell, by establish- 
ing manufactures on the Merrimac Eiver, late 
in the eighteenth century; and in more recent 
times two members of the family have held the 
position of judge in the Supreme Court of Mas- 
sachusetts. They are a family of refined intel- 
lectual tastes, as well as of good business and 
professional ability, but of a retiring disposi- 
tion and not often conspicuous in public life, — 
a family of general good qualities, nicely bal- 
anced between liberal and conservative, and 
with a poetic vein running through it for the 
past hundred years or more. In the Class of 
1867 there was an Edward J. Lowell who was 
chosen class odist, and who wrote poetry nearly, 
if not quite, as good as that of his distinguished 
relative at the same period of life. 

James Russell Lowell was born at Elmwood, 
as it is now called, on Washington's birthday 
in 1819, — as if to make a good staunch patriot 
of him ; and, what is even more exceptional in 
American life, he lived and died in the same 
house in which he was born. It was not such a 
house as the Craigie mansion, but still spacious 

83 ,) 



84 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

and dignified, and denoted very fair prosperity 
for those times. 

Elmwood itself extends for some thirty rods 
on Brattle Street, but the entrance to the house 
is on a cross-road which runs down to the 
marshes. Beyond Elmwood there is a stone- 
cutter's establishment, and next to that Mount 
Auburn Cemetery, which, however, was a fine 
piece of woodland in Lowell's youth, called 
Sweet Auburn by the Harvard students, much 
frequented by love-sick swains and strolling 
parties of youths and maidens. 

The Lowell residence was well into the coun- 
try at that time. There were few houses near 
it, and Boston could only be reached by a long 
detour in a stage ; so that an expedition to the 
city exhausted the better part of a day. It was 
practically further in the country than Concord 
is at present; and it was here that Lowell en- 
joyed that repose of mind which is essential to 
vigorous mental development, and could find 
such interests in external nature as the poet 
requires for the embellishment of his verse. 

He went to college at the age of fifteen, two 
years older than Edward Everett, but suffi- 
ciently young to prove himself a precocious stu- 
dent. Cambridge boys of good families have 
always been noted at Harvard for their gen- 
tlemanly deportment. Besides this, Lowell had 
an immense fund of wit and good spirits, and 



LOWELL 85 

the two together served to make him very popu- 
lar — perhaps too much so for his immediate 
good. His father had great hopes of his prom- 
ising son, — that he would prove a fine scholar 
and take a prominent part in the commence- 
ment exercises. He even offered the boy a re- 
ward of two hundred dollars in case this should 
happen; but the attractions of student and 
social life proved too strong for James. He was 
quick at languages, but slow in mathematics, 
and as for Butler's analogy he cannot be blamed 
for the aversion with which he regarded it. He 
writes a letter in which he confesses to peeping 
over the professor's shoulder to see what 
marks have been given for his recitations, so 
that his father's exhortation would seem at one 
time to have been seriously felt by him ; but the 
effort did not last long, and we find him repeat- 
edly reprimanded for neglect of college duties. 
He did not live the life of a roaring blade, 
but more like the humming-bird that darts 
from one plant to another, and gathers sweet- 
ness from every flower in the garden. Finally 
he was rusticated, just after he had been elected 
poet of his class, with directions not to return 
until commencement. We recognize the Puri- 
tanic severity of President Quincy in this sen- 
tence, which robbed young Lowell of the pleas- 
antest term of college life, as well as the honor 
of appearing on the stage on Class Day. That 



S6 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

Ms poem should have been read by another to 
the assembled families of his classmates, 
served to make his absence more conspicuous. 
Nor can we discover any sufficient reason for 
such hard statement. 

At the same age that Longfellow was writing 
for the United States Literary Gazette, Lowell 
was scribbling verses for an undergraduates' 
periodical called Harvardiana. They were not 
very serious productions, and might all be in- 
cluded under the head of bric-a-brac ; but there 
was a-plenty of them. While Longfellow's verse 
at nineteen was remarkable for its perfection 
of form, Lowell's suffered chiefly from a lack 
of this. He had an idea that poetry ought to be 
an inspiration of the moment; a good founda- 
tion to begin with, but which he found after- 
wards it was necessary to modify. 

In the preface to one of his Biglow Papers he 
speaks of his life in Concord as being 

" As lazy as the bream 
Which only thinks to head up stream." 

The men whom he chiefly associated with there 
were named Barziliai and Ebenezer, and the 
hoar frost of the Concord meadows would seem 
to have had a chilling effect on Lowell's natu- 
rally tolerant and amiable disposition. He was 
not attracted by Emerson at this time, but, on 
the contrary, would seem to have felt an aver- 



LOWELL 87 

sion to him. The following lines in his class 
poem could not have referred to anyone else : 

"Woe for Religion, too, when men who claim 
To place a ' Reverend' before their name 
Ascend the Lord's own holy place to preach 
In strains that Kneeland had been proud to reach; 
And which, if measured by Judge Thatcher's scale, 
Had doomed their author to the county jail! 
Alas that Christian ministers should dare 
To preach the views of Gibbon and Voltaire!" 

To confound the strong spiritual assertion of 
Emerson with the purely negative attitude of 
the French satirist was a common mistake in 
those days, and the Lowell of 1838 needs small 
excuse for it. He must have been in a biting 
humor at this time, for there is a cut all round 
in his class poem, although it is the most vigor- 
ous and highly-finished production of his aca- 
demic years. 

After college came the law, in which he suc- 
ceeded as well as youthful attorneys commonly 
do; and at the age of twenty-five he entered 
into the holy bonds of matrimony. 

The union of James Russell Lowell to Maria 
White, of Watertown, was the most poetic mar- 
riage of the nineteenth century, and can only 
be compared to that of Elizabeth Barrett and 
Eobert Browning. Miss White was herself a 
poetess, and full of poetical impulse to the 
brim. Maria would seem to have been born in 



88 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

the White family as Albinos appear in Africa, 
— for the sake of contrast. She shone like a 
single star in a cloudy sky, — a pale, slender, 
graceful girl, with eyes, to use Herrick's expres- 
sion, ''like a crystal glasse/' A child was born 
where she did not belong, and Lowell was the 
chivalrous knight who rescued her. 

It must have been Maria White who made an 
Emersonian of him. Margaret Fuller had 
stirred up the intellectual life of New England 
women to a degree never known before or since, 
and Miss White was one of those who came 
within the scope of her influence.* She studied 
German, and translated poems from Uhland, 
who might be called the German Longfellow. 
Certain it is that from the time of their mar- 
riage his opinions not only changed from what 
they had been previously, but his ideas of 
poetry, philosophy, and religion became more 
consistent and clearly defined. The path that 
she pointed out to him, or perhaps which they 
discovered together, was the one that he fol- 
lowed all through life; so that in one of his 
later poems, he said, half seriously, that he was 
ready to adopt Emerson's creed if anyone could 
tell him just what it was. 

The life they lived together was a poem in 
itself, and reminds one of Goethe's saying, that 

* Lowell himself speaks of her as being " considered 
transcendental." 



LOWELL 89 

*^he who is sufficiently provided for within has 
need of little from without.'' They were poor 
in worldly goods, but rich in affection, in fine 
thoughts, and courageous endeavor. It is said 
that when they were married Lowell had but 
^ve hundred dollars of his own. They went to 
New York and Philadelphia, and soon discover- 
ing that they had spent more than half of it, 
they concluded to return home. 

The next ten years of Lowell's life might be 
called the making of the man. He worked hard 
and lived economically ; earning what he could 
by the law, and what he could not by magazine 
writing, which paid poorly enough. Publishers 
had not then discovered that what the general 
public desires is not literature, but information 
on current topics, and this is the last thing 
which the true man of letters is able to provide. 
A magazine article, or a campaign biography 
of General Grant, could be written in a few 
weeks, but a solid historical biography of him, 
with a critical examination of his campaigns, 
has not yet been written, and perhaps never 
will be. A literary venture of Lowell and his 
friends in 1843, to found a first-rate literary 
magazine, proved a failure; and it is to be 
feared that he lost money by it.* 

However the world might use him he was 

* See Scudder's Life of LoweU, iii. 109. 



90 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

sure of comfort and happiness at his own fire- 
side, where he read Shelley, and Keats, and 
Lessing, while Mrs. Lowell studied upon her 
German translations. The sympathy of a true- 
hearted woman is always valuable, even when 
she does not quite understand the grievance in 
question, but the sympathy that Maria Lowell 
could give her husband was of a rare sort. She 
could sjmapathize with him wholly in heart and 
intellect. She encouraged him to fresh en- 
deavors and continual improvement. Thus he 
went on year by year broadening his mind, 
strengthening his faculties, and improving his 
reputation. The days of frolicsome gaiety 
were over. He now lived in a more serious 
vein, and felt a deeper, more satisfying happi- 
ness. It was much more the ideal life of a poet 
than that of Thoreau, paddling up and down 
Concord Eiver in search of the inspiration 
which only comes when we do not think of it. 

It may be suspected that he read more litera- 
ture than law during these years, and we notice 
that he did not go, like Emerson, to the great 
fountain-heads of poetry, — to Homer or Dante, 
Shakespeare or Goethe, — but courted the muse 
rather among such tributaries as Virgil, Mo- 
liere, Chaucer, Keats, and Lessing. It may 
have been better for him that he began in this 
manner ; but a remark that Scudder attributes 
to him in regard to Lessing gives us an insight 



LOWELL 91 

into the deeper mecliaiiisin of Ms mind. 
'^Shelley's poetry," he said, ^^was like the tran- 
sient radiance of St. Elmo's fire, bnt Lessing 
was wholly a poet.'' This is exactly the oppo- 
site of the view he held during his college life, 
for Lessing worked in a methodical and pains- 
taking manner and finished what he wrote with 
the greatest care. 

More than this, Lessing was as Lowell real- 
ized afterwards, — too critical and polemical to 
be wholly a poet. His ^^ Emilia Galotti" still 
holds a high position on the German stage and 
has fine poetic qualities, but it is written in 
prose. His ^ ^ Nathan the Wise ' ' was written in 
verse, but did not prove a success as a drama. 
In one he attacked the tyranny of the German 
petty princes, and in the other the intolerance 
of the Established Church. We may assume 
that is the reason why Lowell admired them; 
but Lowell was also too critical and polemic to 
be wholly a poet, — except on certain occasions. 
In 1847 he published the ^' Fable for Critics," 
the keenest piece of poetical satire since 
Byron's ^^ English Bards and Scotch Review- 
ers," — keen and even saucy, but perfectly 
good-humored. About the same time he com- 
menced his ^^Biglow Papers," which did not 
wholly cease until 1866, and were the most in- 
cisive and aggressive anti-slavery literature of 
that period. Soon afterwards he wrote ^'The 



92 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

Vision of Sir Launfal,'^ which has become the 
most widely known of all his poems, and which 
contains passages of the purest a priori verse. 
Goethe, who exercised so powerful an influence 
on Emerson, does not appear to have interested 
Lowell at all. 

The most plaintive of Beethoven scherzos, — 
that in the Moonlight Sonata, — says as if it 
were spoken in words : 

" Once we were happy, now I am forlorn ; 
Fortune has darkened, and happiness gone." 

LowelPs poetic marriage did not last quite ten 
years. Maria White was always frail and deli- 
cate, and she became more so continually. 
Longfellow's clear foresight noticed the dan- 
ger she was in years before her death, which 
took place in the autumn of 1853. She left 
one child, Mabel Lowell, slender and pale like 
herself, and with poetical lines in her face, too, 
but fortunately endowed with her father's good 
constitution. Only ten years! But such ten 
years, worth ten centuries of the life of a girl 
of fashion, who thinks she is happy because 
she has everything she wants. If the truth 
were known we might find that in the twi- 
light of his life Lowell thought more of these 
ten years with Maria White than of the six 
years when he was Ambassador to England, — 
with twenty-nine dinner-parties in the month 
of June. 



LOWELL 93 

What would poets do without war? The 
Trojan war, or some similar conflict, served as 
the ground- work of Homer's mighty epic; 
Virgil followed in similar lines; Dante would 
never have been famous but for the Guelph and 
Ghibeline struggle. Shakespeare's plays are 
full of war and fighting ; and the wars of Napo- 
leon stimulated Byron, Schiller, and Goethe to 
the best efforts of their lives. In dealing with 
men like Emerson, Longfellow, and Lowell, who 
were the intellectual leaders of their time, it is 
impossible to escape their influence in the anti- 
slavery movement, and its influence upon them, 
unpopular as that subject is at present. That 
was the heroic age of American history, and 
the truth concerning it has not yet been written. 
It was as heroic to the South as to the North, 
for, as Sumner said, the slaveholders would 
never have made their desperate attack on the 
Government of this country if they had not been 
themselves the slaves of their own social or- 
ganization. 

It was the solution of a great historical prob- 
lem, like that of Constitutional Government 
versus the Stuarts, and it ought to be treated 
from a national and not a sectional stand-point. 

The live men of that time became abolition- 
ists as inevitably as their forefathers became 
supporters of the Declaration of Independence. 
If Webster and Everett had been born twenty 



94 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

years later, they must needs have become anti- 
slavery, too. Those of Lowell's friends, like 
George S. Hillard and George B. Loring, who 
for social or political reasons took the opposite 
side, afterwards found themselves left in the 
lurch by an adverse public opinion. 

It was the Mexican war that first aroused 
Lowell to the seriousness of the extension of 
slavery, and it was meeting a recruiting officer 
in the streets of Boston, ^^ covered all over with 
brass let alone that which nature had sot on his 
countenance," which inspired his writing the 
first of the ^'Biglow Papers." They were 
hastily and carelessly written, and Lowell him- 
self held them in slight estimation as literature ; 
but they became immediately popular, as no 
poetry had that he had published previously. 
Their freshness and directness appealed to the 
manliness and good sense of the average New 
Englander, and the whole community responded 
to them with repeated applause. There is, after 
all, much poetry in the Biglow Papers, the more 
genuine because unintentional; but they are 
full of the keenest wit and a proverbial philoso- 
phy which, if less profound than Emerson's, is 
more capable of a practical application. 

The vernacular in which they are written 
must have been learned at Concord, — perhaps 
on the front stoop of the Middlesex Hotel, — 
while Lowell was listening to the pithy conver- 



LOWELL 95 

sation of Yankee farmers, not only about their 
crops and cattle, but also discussing church 
affairs and politics, local and national. It was 
the grandfathers of these men who drove the 
British back from Concord bridge, and it was 
their sons who fought their way from the Eapi- 
dan to Richmond. With the help of country 
lawyers they sent Sumner and Wilson to the 
Senate, and knew what they were about when 
they did this. For wit, humor, and repartee, — 
and, it may be added, for decent conversation, 
— there is no class of men like them. Both 
Lowell and Emerson have testified to their 
intrinsic worth. 

On one occasion a Concord farmer was 
driving a cow past Sanborn's school-house, 
when an impudent boy called out, ^^The calf 
always follows the cow.'' ^^Why aren't you 
behind here, thenT' retorted the man, with a 
look that went home like the stroke of a cane. 
If Lowell had been present he would have been 
delighted. 

The Yankee dialect which he makes use of as 
a vehicle in these verses is not always as clear- 
cut as it might be. He says, for instance, 

"Pleasure doos make us Yankee kind of winch 
As if it was something paid for by the inch." 

i The true New England countryman never flat- 
tens a vowel ; if he changes it he always makes 



96 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

it sharp. He would be more likely to say: 
*' Pleasure does make us Yankee kind er winch, 
as if 'twas suthin' paid for by the inch." 
There are other instances of similar sort; but, 
nevertheless, if the primitive Yankee should 
become extinct, as now seems very probable, 
Lowell's masterly portrait of him will remain, 
and future generations can reconstruct him 
from it, as Agassiz reconstructed an extinct 
species of mammal from fossil bones. 

Lowell did not join the Free-soilers, who 
were now bearing the brunt of the anti-slavery 
conflict, but attached himself to the more aristo- 
cratic wing of the old abolitionists, which was 
led by Edmund Quincy, Maria Chapman, and 
L. Maria Child. Lowell was far from being a 
non-resistant. In fact, he might be called a 
fighting-man, although he disapproved of 
duelling; and this served to keep him at a dis- 
tance from Garrison, of whom he wisely re- 
marked that ^^the nearer public opinion 
approached to him the further he retreated into 
the isolation of his own private opinions. ' ' He 
wrote regularly for the Anti-Slavery Standard 
until 1851, when the death of his father-in-law 
supplied the long-desired means for a journey 
to Italy, — more desired perhaps for his wife's 
health than for his own gratification. It may 
be the fault of his biographers, but I cannot 
discover that Lowell took any share in the oppo- 



I 



LOWELL 97 

sition to the Fugitive Slave bill, or in the elec- 
tion of Sumner, which was the signal event that 
followed it. In Iiis whole life Lowell never 
made the acquaintance of a practical statesman, 
while Whittier was in constant communication 
with prominent members of the Free-soil and 
Eepublican parties. Sumner went to hear 
Loweirs lecture on Milton, and praised it as a 
work of genius. 

I have heard the ^^ Vision of Sir LaunfaP' 
spoken of more frequently than any other of 
Lowell's poems. Some of the descriptive pass- 
ages in it would seem to have flowed from his 
pen as readily as ink from a quill; and there 
are others which appear to have been evolved 
with much thought and ingenuity. One cannot 
help feeling the sudden change from a June 
morning at Elmwood to a mediasval castle in 
Europe as somewhat abrupt ; but when we think 
of it subjectively as a poetic vision which came 
to Lowell himself seated on his own door-step, 
this disillusion vanishes, and we sympathize 
heartily with the writer. There is no place in 
the world where June seems so beautiful as in 
New England, on account of the dismal, cut- 
throat weather in the months that precede it. 
Perhaps it is so in reality; for what nature 
makes us suffer from at one time she commonly 
atones for it another. 

The ^' Fable for Critics" is written in an 

7 



98 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

easy, nonchalant manner, which helps to miti- 
gate its severity. Thoreau could not have liked 
very well being called an imitator of Emerson; 
bnt the wit of it is inimitable. ^'T. never pur- 
loins the apples from Emerson's trees; it is 
only the windfalls that he carries off and passes 
for his own fruit." Emerson remarked on 
this, that Thoreau was sufficiently original in 
his own way ; and he always spoke of Lowell in 
a friendly and appreciative manner. The whole 
poem is filled with such homely comparisons, 
which hit the nail exactly on the head. The 
most subtle piece of analysis, however, is Low- 
ell's comparison between Emerson and Carlyle : 

" There are persons, mole-blind to the soul's make and style, 
Who insist on a likeness 'twixt him and Carlyle; 
To compare him with Plato would be vastly fairer, 
Carlyle's the more burly, but E. is the rarer; 
He sees fewer objects, but clear lier, truelier. 
If C.'s as original, E.'s more peculiar; 
That he's more of a man you might say of the one. 
Of the other he's more of an Emerson; 
C.'s the Titan, as shaggy of mind as of limb, — 
E. the clear-eyed Olympian, rapid and slim; 
The one's two-thirds Norseman, the other half Greek, 
Where the one's most abounding, the other's to seek." 

It was the fashion in England at that time to 
disparage Emerson as an imitator of Carlyle; 
and this was Lowell's reply to it. 
He told Professor Hedge an amusing incident 



LOWELL 99 

that happened during his first visit to Eome. 
Lowell and his wife took lodgings with a re- 
spectable elderly Italian woman whose husband 
was in a sickly condition. One morning she met 
him in the passageway with tearful eyes and 
said : ^^Un gran^ disgrazie happened last night, 
— my poor husband went to heaven." Lowell 
wondered why there was a pope in Eome if 
going to heaven was considered a disgrace 
there. 

Longfellow's resignation of his professorship 
at Harvard was a rare piece of good fortune for 
Lowell ; for it was the only position of the kind 
that he could have obtained there or anywhere 
else. In fact, it was a question whether the 
appointment would be confirmed on account of 
his transcendental tendencies, and his connec- 
tion with the Anti-slavery Standard; but Long- 
fellow threw the whole weight of his influence 
in Lowell's favor, and this would seem to have 
decided it. From this time till 1873 Lowell was 
more of a prose-writer than a poet, and his 
essays on Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, and 
other English poets are the best of their kind, 
— not brilliant, but appreciative, penetrating, 
and well-considered. Wasson said of him that 

1 no other critic in the English tongue came so 
near to expressing the inexpressible as Lowell. 
One could wish that his studies in Shakes- 

: peare had been more extended. He treats the 

LofC. 



100 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

subject as if he felt it was too great for him; 
but he was the first to take notice that the play 
of Richard III. indicated in its main extent a 
different hand, and it is now generally admitted 
to have been the work of Fletcher. With the 
keenest insight he noticed that the magician 
Prospero was an impersonation of Shakespeare 
himself; and George Brandes, the most thor- 
oughgoing of Shakespearean scholars, after- 
wards came to the same conclusion. 

Lowell was the gentlemanly instructor. He 
appealed to the gentleman in the students who 
sat before him, and he rarely appealed in vain. 
Like Longfellow he carried an atmosphere of 
politeness about him, which was sufficient to 
protect him from everything rude and common. 
He would say to his class in Italian: '^I shall 
not mark you if you are tardy, but I hope you 
will all be here on time.'' This was a safer 
procedure with a small division of Juniors than 
it would have been with a large division of 
Freshmen or Sophomores. Neither did he take 
much personal interest in his classes. He 
always invited them to an entertainment at 
Elmwood in June, but two or three years later 
he could not remember their faces unless they 
remained in or about Cambridge. In regard to 
his efficiency as an instructor and lecturer there 
was a difference of opinion. 

He attended the meetings of the college fac- 



LOWELL 101 

nlty quite regularly considering the distance of 
Elmwood from the college grounds ; and he was 
once heard to say that there seemed to be more 
bad weather on Monday nights than at any 
other time in the week. His presence might 
have been dispensed with for the most part. 
He rarely spoke in conclave, and when the ques- 
tion came up in regard to the suspension of 
students he often declined to vote. His decorum 
was perfect, but now and then a humorous look 
could be observed in his eyes, and it may be 
suspected that he had a quiet laugh all to him- 
self on the way homeward. On one occasion, 
before the meeting had been called to order, 
Professor Cutler said to him: ^'Do you not 
dread B.'s forthcoming translation of the 
Iliad?" But Lowell, seeing that he was 
watched, replied: ^'Oh, no, not at all," at the 
same time nodding to Cutler with his brows. 

He was always well-dressed, and pretty close 
to the conventional in his ways,-;-noted specially 
for the nicety of his gloves. This was a kind 
of safeguard to him. Insidious persons sug- 
gested that he perfumed his beard, but I do not 
believe it. He does not appear to have been 
fond of walking, for we never met him in any 
part of Cambridge except on the direct road 
from Elmwood to the college gate. He had a 
characteristic gait of his own — walking slowly 
in rather a dreamy manner, and keeping time 



102 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

to the movement of his feet with his arms and 
shoulders. He was not, however, lost in con- 
templation, for he often scrutinized those who 
passed him as closely as a portrait painter 
might. 

If one could meet Lowell in a fairly empty 
horse-car, he would be quite sociable and enter- 
taining ; but if the horse-car filled up, he would 
become reticent again. He clung to his old 
friends, his classmates, and others with whom 
he had grown up, and did not easily make new 
ones. The modesty of his ambition is conspic- 
uous in the fact that he was quite satisfied with 
the small salary paid him by the college, — at 
first only twelve hundred dollars. He evidently 
did not care for luxury. 

Lowell's second marriage was as simple and 
inevitable as the first. Miss Dunlap was not an 
ordinary housekeeper, but the sister of one of 
Maria Lowell's most intimate friends, and she 
was such a pleasant, attractive lady that the 
wonder is rather he should have waited four 
years before concluding to offer himself. She 
was compared to the Greek bust called Clyte, 
because her hair grew so low down upon her 
forehead, and this was considered an additional 
charm. 

Louisa Alcott had a story that at first she 
refused Lowell's offer on account of what peo- 
ple might say; and that then he composed a 



LOWELL 103 

poem answering her objections in the form of 
an allegory, and that this finally convinced her. 
If he had considered material interests he would 
have married differently. 

In November, 1857, the firm of Phillips & 
Sampson issued the first number of the Atlantic 
Monthly in the cause of high-minded literature, 
— a cause which ultimately proved to be their 
ruin. Lowell accepted the position of editor, 
and such a periodical as it proved to be under 
his guidance could not have been found in Eng- 
land, and perhaps not in the whole of Europe; 
but it could not be made to pay, and two years 
later Phillips & Sampson failed, — partly on 
that account, and partially the victims of a 
piratical opposition. 

Lowell published Emerson's '^Brahma" in 
spite of the shallow ridicule with which he fore- 
saw it would be greeted; but when Emerson 
sent him his ''Song of Nature" he returned it 
on account of the single stanza : 

" One in a Judaean manger, 
And one by Avon stream, 
One over against the mouths of Nile, 
And one in the Academe." 

which he declared was more than the Atlantic 
could be held responsible for. Emerson, who 
really knew little as to what the public thought 
of him, was for once indignant. He said: ''I 



104 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

did not know who had constituted Mr. Lowell 
my censor, and I carried the verses to Miss 
Caroline Hoar, who read them and said, that 
she considered those four lines the best in the 
piece. ' ' He permitted Lowell, however, to pub- 
lish the poem without them, as may be seen by 
examining the pages of the Atlantic, and after- 
wards published the original copy in his '^May 
Day." 

LowelPs editorship of the North American 
Review, which followed after this, was not so 
successful. It was chiefly a political magazine 
at that time, and to understand politics in a 
large way — that is, sufficiently to write on the 
subject — one must not only be a close observer 
of public affairs, but also a profound student 
of history; and Lowell was neither. He was 
not acquainted with prominent men in public 
life, and depended too much on information 
derived at dinner-parties, or similar occasions. 
During the war period Sumner, Wilson, and 
Andrew were almost omnipotent in Massachu- 
setts, for the three worked together in a com- 
mon cause; but power always engenders envy 
and so an inside opposition grew up within the 
Republican party to which Lowell lent his assist- 
ance without being aware of its true character. 
His articles in the North American on pub- 
lic affairs were severely criticised by Andrew 
and Wilson, while Frank W. Bird frankly called 



LOWELL 105 

them ^^ giving aid and comfort to the enemy.'* 
It was certainly a doubtful course to pursue at 
such a critical juncture — ^when all patriots 
should have been united — and it offended a 
good many Republicans without conciliating 
the opposition. LowelPs successor in this edi- 
torial chair was an old Webster Whig who had 
become a Democrat. 

In 1873 he resigned his professorship and 
went to Italy for a holiday. He said to some 
friends whom he met in Florence: ^'I am tired 
of being called Professor Lowell, and I want 
to be plain Mr. Lowell again. Eliot wanted to 
keep my name on the catalogue for the honor of 
the university, but I did not like the idea." 
This was true republicanism and worthy of a 
poet. 

Lowell was little known on the continent, and 
he travelled in a quiet, unostentatious manner. 
He went to dine with his old friends, but 
avoided introductions, and remained at Flor- 
ence nearly two months after other Americans 
had departed for Rome. The reason he alleged 
for this was that Rome was a mouldy place and 
the ruins made him feel melancholy; also, 
because he preferred oil paintings to frescos. 
He had just come from Venice, and spoke with 
enthusiasm of the mighty works of Tintoretto, 
— especially his small painting of the Visita- 
tion, above the landing of the staircase in the 



106 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

Scuola of San Rocco. He did not like the easel- 
paintings of Eaphael on account of their hard 
outlines; those in the Vatican did him better 
justice. This idea he may have derived from 
William Morris Hunt, the Boston portrait- 
painter. He considered the action of the Niobe 
group too strenuous to be represented in 
marble. 

Miss Mary Felton liked the Niobe statues ; so 
Lowell said, ^^Now come back with me, and I 
will sit on you.'' Accordingly we all returned 
to the Niobe hall, where Lowell lectured us on 
the statues without, however, entirely con- 
vincing Miss Felton. Then we went to the hall 
in the Uffizi Palace, which is called the Tribune. 
Mrs. Lowell had never been in the Tribune, 
where the Venus de' Medici is enshrined; so 
her husband opened the door wide and said, 
^'Now go in" — as if he were opening the gates 
of Paradise. 

At Bologna he wished to make an excursion 
into the mountains, but the veturino charged 
about twice the usual price, and though the man 
afterwards reduced his demand to a reasonable 
figure Lowell would not go with him at all, and 
told him that such practices made Americans 
dislike the Italian people. It is to be feared 
that a strange Italian might fare just as badly 
in America. 

Eeaders of Lowell's ^^ Fireside Travels" will 



LOWELL 107 

have noticed that the first of them is addressed 
to the '^Edelmann Storg" in Eome. The true 
translation of this expression is ^'Nobleman 
Story;" that is, William W. Story, the sculp- 
tor, who modelled the statue of Edward Everett 
in the Boston public garden. Lowell's biog- 
rapher, however, does not appear to have been 
aware of the full significance of this paraphrase 
of Story's name. 

When King Bomba II. was expelled from Na- 
ples by Garibaldi he retired to Eome with his 
private possessions, including a large number 
of oil paintings. Wishing to dispose of some of 
these, and being aware that Americans paid 
good prices, he applied to William Story to 
transact the business for him. This the sculp- 
tor did in a satisfactory manner; whereupon 
King Bomba, instead of rewarding Story with 
a cheque, conferred on him a patent of nobility. 
It seems equally strange that Story should have 
accepted such a dubious honor, and that Lowell 
should recognize it. 

On his return to Cambridge the following 
year, Lowell found himself a grandfather, his 
daughter having married a gentleman farmer 
in Worcester county. He was greatly de- 
lighted, and wrote to E. L. Godkin, editor of 
The Nation: 

' ' If you wish to taste the real bouquet of life, 
I advise you to procure yourself a grandson, 



108 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

whether by adoption or theft. . . . Get one, and 
the Nation will no longer offend anybody.'' * 

This was a pretty broad hint, but E. L. God- 
kin was not the man to pay much attention to 
the advice of Lowell or anybody. In fact, he 
seems to have won Lowell over after this to his 
own way of thinking. 

Lowell certainly became more conservative 
with age. He did not support the movement 
for negro citizenship, and had separated him- 
self in a manner from the other New England 
poets. After 1872 Longfellow saw little of him, 
except on state occasions. In 1876 he made a 
political address that showed that if he had not 
already gone over to the Democratic party he 
was very close upon the line. Charles Francis 
Adams had already gone over to Tilden, and had 
carried the North American Review with him. 
It would not do to lose Lowell also, so the Re- 
publican leaders hit upon the shrewd device of 
nominating him as a presidential elector, an 
honor which he could not very well decline. 
When the disputed election of Hayes and Til- 
den came, Godkin proposed that, in order to 
prevent "' Mexicanizing the government,'' one 
of the Hayes electors should cast his vote for 
General Bristow, which would throw the elec- 
tion of President into the House of Representa- 

* Scudder's biography, ii., 186. 



LOWELL 109 

tives; and he endeavored to persuade Lowell 
to do this. Lowell went so far as to take legal 
advice on the subject, but his counsellor in- 
formed him that since the election of John 
Quincy Adams it had been virtually decided that 
an elector must cast his vote according to the 
ticket on which he was chosen. When the elec- 
tors met at the Parker House in January, 1877, 
Lowell deposited his ballot for Hayes and 
Wheeler, and the slight applause that followed 
showed that his colleagues were conscious of the 
position he had assumed. 

When President Hayes appointed Lowell to 
be Minister to Spain, Lowell remarked that he 
did not see why it should have come to him. It 
really came to him through his friend E. R. 
Hoar, of Concord, who was brother-in-law to 
Secretary Evarts. His friends wondered that 
he should accept the position, but the truth was 
that Lowell at this time was comparatively poor. 
His taxes had increased, and his income had 
diminished. He complained to C. P. Cranch 
that the whole profit from the sale of his books 
during the preceding year was less than a hun- 
dred dollars, and he thought there ought to be 
a law for the protection of authors. The real 
trouble was hard times. 

He did not like Madrid, and at the end of a 
year wrote that it seemed impossible for him to 
endure the life there any longer. Evarts gave 



110 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

him a vacation, and at the end of the second 
year Hayes promoted him to the Court of St. 
James. 

Such an appointment would have been dan- 
gerous enough in 1861, but at the time it was 
made the relations between the United States 
and Great Britain were sufficiently peaceable to 
warrant it. Lowell represented his country in 
a highly creditable manner. The only difficulty 
he experienced was with the Fenian agitation, 
and he managed that with such diplomatic tact 
that no one has yet been able to discover 
whether he was in favor of home rule for Ire- 
land or not. 

He made a number of excellent addresses in 
England, besides a multitude of after-dinner 
speeches. Perhaps the best of them was his ad- 
dress at the Coleridge celebration, in which he 
levelled an attack on the English canonization 
of what they call ^' common sense," but which 
is really a new name for dogmatism. Lowell, 
if not a transcendentalist, was always an ideal- 
ist, and he knew that ideality was as necessary 
to Cromwell and Canning as it was to Shakes- 
peare and Scott. 

He was certainly more popular in England 
than he had ever been in America, and he 
openly admitted that he disliked to resign his 
position. Professor Child said, in 1882 : ^^ Low- 
ell 's conversation is witty, with a basis of liter- 



LOWELL 111 

ary cramming; and that seems to be what the 
English like. He went to twenty-nine dinner 
parties in the month of June, and made a speech 
at each one of them. ' ^ 

In the last years of his life he was greatly 
infested with imitators who, as he said of Emer- 
son in the '' Fable for Critics,'' stole his fruit 
and then brought it back to him on their own 
dishes. Some of them were too influential to 
be easily disposed of, and others did not know 
when they were rebuffed. An old man, failing 
in strength and vigor, he had to endure them as 
best he could. 

The story of Lowell's visions rests on a single 
authority, and if there was any truth in it, it 
seems probable that he would have confided the 
fact to more intimate friends. There are well- 
authenticated instances of visions seen by per- 
sons in a waking condition — this always hap- 
pens, for instance, in delirium tremens — but 
they are sure to indicate nervous derangement, 
and are commonly followed by death. If there 
was ever a poet with a sound mind and a sound 
body, it was James Russell Lowell. 

Edwin Arnold considered him the best of 
American poets, while Matthew Arnold did not 
like him at all. Emerson, in his last years, pre- 
ferred him to Longfellow, but it is doubtful if 
he always did so. The strong point of his poetry 
is its intelligent manliness, — the absence of af- 



112 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

f ectation and all sentimentality ; but it lacks the 
musical element. He composed neither songs 
nor ballads, — nothing to match Hiawatha, or 
Gray's famous Elegy. America still awaits a 
poet who shall combine the savoir faire of Low- 
ell with the force of Emerson and the grace and 
purity of Longfellow. 

Emerson had an advantage over his literary 
contemporaries in the vigorous life he lived. 
You feel in his writing the energy of necessity. 
The academic shade is not favorable to the cul- 
tivation of genius, and Lowell reclined under it 
too much. His best work was already per- 
formed before he became a professor. What he 
lacks as a poet, however, he compensates for 
as a wit. He is the best of American humorists 
— there are few who will be inclined to dispute 
that — even though we regret occasional cyni- 
cisms, like his jest on Milton's blindness in 
^^ Fireside Travels.'' 




C. p. CRANCH 



t; 



CRANCH. 

Christophee Peaece Ceanch was born 
March 9, 1813, at Alexandria, Virginia, and was 
the son of Judge William Cranch, of the United 
States Circuit Court. His father came orig- 
inally from Weymouth, Massachusetts, and had 
been appointed to his position through the influ- 
ence of John Quancy Adams. His mother, 
Anna Greenleaf, belonged to a well known Bos- 
ton family. Pearce, as he was always called by 
his relatives, indicated a talent for the fine arts, 
as commonly happens, at an early age, and 
united with this a lively interest in music, sing- 
ing and playing on the flute. These side issues 
may have prevented him from entering college 
so early as he might otherwise have done. He 
graduated at Columbia College, in 1832, after 
a three-year course. He wished to make a pro- 
fession of painting, but Judge Cranch was 
aware how precarious this would be as a means 
of livelihood, and advised him to study for the 
ministry, — for which his quiet ways and grave 
demeanor seemed to have adapted him. He ac- 
cordingly entered the Harvard Divinity-School, 
and was ordained as a Unitarian clergyman. 

For the next six years Cranch lived the life of 
an itinerant preacher. He preached all over 

8 113 



114 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

New England, making friends everywhere, and 
receiving numerous calls without, however, set- 
tling down to a fixed habitation. This would 
seem to have been a peculiarity of his tempera- 
ment ; for in 1875 George "William Curtis wrote 
to Mr. and Mrs. Cranch a letter which began 
with ^^ ye Bedouins" ; and it is true that until 
that time he can hardly be said to have had a 
habitation of his own. He extended his migra- 
tion as minister-at-large from Bangor, Maine, 
to Louisville, Kentucky. His varied accom- 
plishments made him attractive to the younger 
members of the parishes for which he preached, 
but he never remained long enough in one place 
for their interest to take root. 

The wave of German thought and literary in- 
terest was now sweeping over England and 
America. Repelled by doctors of divinity and 
the older class of scholars, it was seized upon 
with avidity by the more susceptible natures of 
the younger generation. Its influence was des- 
tined to be felt all through the coming period of 
American literature. C. P. Cranch was aif ected 
by it, as Emerson, Longfellow and even Haw- 
thorne, were affected by it. This, however, did 
not take place at once, and when Emerson's 
^* Nature'' was published, Cranch was at first 
repelled by the peculiarity of its style. At the 
house of Rev. James Freeman Clark, in Cincin- 
nati, he drew some innocently satirical illus- 



CRANCH 115 

trations of it. One was of a man with an enor- 
mous eye under which he wrote: ^^ I became 
one great transparent eye-ball"; and another 
was a pumpkin with a human face, beneath 
which was written : ^ ^ We expand and grow in 
the sunshine. ' ' In another sketch Eriierson and 
Margaret Fuller were represented driving 
'^ over hill and dale" in a rockaway.* 

He would make these humorous sketches to 
entertain his friends at any time, seizing on a 
half-sheet of paper, or whatever might be at 
hand ; but he did not long continue to caricature 
Emerson. His first volume of poetry, published 
in 1844, was dedicated to Emerson, and in 
Dwight's '^ Translations from Goethe and 
Schiller," there are a number of short pieces 
by Cranch, almost perfect in their rendering 
from German to English. Among these the cel- 
ebrated ballad of ^^ The Fisher" is translated 
so beautifully as to be slightly, if at all, inferior 
to the original. The stanza, 

" The water in dreamy motion kept, 
As he sat in a dreamy mood, 
A wave hove up, and a damsel stept 
All dripping from the flood," 

may have appealed strongly to Cranch at this 
time ; for we find that in October, 1841, he was 

* Sanborn's Life of Alcott. 



116 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

married at Fishkill-on-the-Hudsoii to a young 
lady of an old Knickerbocker family, Miss Eliz- 
abeth De Windt. If she did not come to him 
out of the Hudson, there can be no doubt that he 
courted her by the banks of the most beautiful 
river in North America. 

Cranch had given up the clerical profession 
six months before this, and had adopted that of 
a landscape painter, for which he would seem to 
have studied with some artist in New York City, 
— unknown to fame, and long since forgotten. 
He continued to sketch and paint, and write 
prose and verse on the Hudson until 1846, when 
he embarked with his wife on a sailing packet 
for Marseilles. He had the good fortune to find 
a fellow-passenger in George William Curtis, 
and during the voyage of seven weeks, a life- 
long friendship grew up between these two 
highly gifted men. 

The volume of poems which he published in 
1844 is now exceedingly rare ; yet many of the 
pieces belong to a high order of excellence. In 
ease and grace of versification they resemble 
Longfellow, but in thought they are more like 
Emerson or Goethe. Consider this opening 
from '' The Eiddle'': 

"Ye bards, ye prophets, ye sages, 
Read to me, if ye can. 
That which hath been the riddle of ages, 
Read me the riddle of Man. 



CRANCH 117 

Then came the bard with his lyre, 

And the sage with his pen and scroll, 
And the prophet with his eye of fire, 

To unriddle a human soul. 

But the soul stood up in its might; 

Its stature they could not scan ; 
And it rayed out a dazzling mystic light, 

And shamed their wisest plan. 

Yet sweetly the bard did sing. 

And learnedly talked the sage. 
And the seer flashed by with his lightning wing. 

Soaring beyond his age." 

This is sonorous. It has a majesty of expres- 
sion and a greatness of thought which makes 
Longfellow's ^' Psalm of Life'' seem weak and 
even common-place. The whole poem is pitched 
in the same key, and Cranch never equalled it 
again, excepting once, and then in a very differ- 
ent manner. Rev. Gideon Arch, a Hungarian 
scholar, philologist, and exile of 1849, said of 
his ^^ Endymion" that there were Endymions 
in all languages, but that Cranch 's was the best. 
To resuscitate it from the oblivion into which 
it has fallen, it is given entire : 

" Yes, it is the queenly moon 
Walking through her starred saloon, 
Silvering all she looks upon: 
I am her Endymion; 
For by night she comes to me, — 
0, I love her wondrously. 



118 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

She into my window looks, 
As I sit with lamp and books, 
And the night-breeze stirs the leaves, 
And the dew drips down the eaves; 
O'er my shoulder peepeth she, 
0, she loves me royally ! 

Then she tells me many a tale, 
With her smile, so sheeny pale. 
Till my soul is overcast 
With such dream-light of the past. 
That I saddened needs must be, 
And I love her mournfully. 

Oft I gaze up in her eyes, 

Raying light through winter skies; 

Far away she saileth on; 

I am no Endymion; 

0, she is too bright for me. 

And I love her hopelessly! 

Now she comes to me again. 
And we mingle joy and pain. 
Now she walks no more afar. 
Regal with train-bearing star. 
But she bends and kisses me — 
0, we love now mutually !" 

This has the very sheen of moonlight upon 
it, and certainly is to be preferred to Dr. John- 
son's scholastic *' Endymion' ' : 

" Diana, huntress chaste and fair, 
Now thy hounds have gone to sleep," — 



CRANCH 119 

If Cranch had continued in this line, and per- 
haps have improved upon it, he would surely 
have become one of the foremost American 
poets, but a poet cannot live by verse alone, and 
after he began to be thoroughly in earnest with 
his painting, his rhythmic genius fell into the 
background. From Marseilles George W. Cur- 
tis proceeded to Egypt, where he wrote his well 
known book of Nile travels, while Cranch set 
out for Rome to perfect his art. 

He studied there at a night-school, painting 
in water colors from nude models and arrange- 
ments of drapery, but not taking lessons from 
any regular instructor. He never applied him- 
self much to figure-painting, however. He sold 
his paintings chiefly to American travellers, and 
when the Revolution broke out in 1848, he re- 
turned to Sorrento, where his second child, Mrs. 
Leonora Scott, was born. His first child was 
born the year previous, in Rome, but afterwards 
died. In 1851, he returned to New York and 
Fishkill, but not meeting with such good appre- 
ciation there as he had in Italy, he went to Eu- 
rope again in the autumn of 1853, and resided in 
Paris. One cause of this may have been the 
unfriendliness of his brother-in-law, who was a 
leading art critic in New York City, and who 
disliked Cranch on account of his wife, and 
never neglected an opportunity of disparaging 
his work. 



120 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

One of his early landscapes is now before me. 
I think it must have been painted anterior to his 
sojourn in Rome, owing to the coldness of the 
coloring. It represents a scene on the Hudson 
near Fishkill, with some cattle in the fore- 
ground, and a rather bold-looking mountain on 
the opposite side of the river. The clouds above 
the mountain are light and fleecy; the foliage 
soft and graceful; the cattle also are fine, but 
the effect is like a chilly spring day when one 
requires a winter overcoat. An allegorical 
piece, illustrating Heine's fir-tree dreaming of 
the palm, has a much pleasanter effect, although 
it represents a wintry scene. 

His art improved greatly in Paris, and he 
also wrote a number of short poems which his 
friend, James Eussell Lowell, published in the 
Atlantic Monthly. In 1856 George L. Stearns 
sent him an order for a painting, which Cranch 
executed the following year, and wrote Mr. 
Stearns this explanation concerning it, in a very 
interesting letter dated Paris, March 18, 1857 : 

^ ^ Your picture is done and is quite a favorite 
with those who have seen it. In fact, I think so 
well of it that I shall probably send it to the 
Exposition, which opens soon. After that it 
shall be sent to you. It is an oak and a sunset 
— a warm and low-toned picture — and I am sure 
you will like if 

This landscape represents two vigorous oak 



CRANCH 121 

trees by the bank of a river, with a sunset seen 
through the branches, and reflected in the water. 
The scene is remarkably like a similar one on 
Concord River, about two hundred yards below 
the spot where Hawthorne and Channing dis- 
covered the body of the schoolmistress who 
drowned herself, as Hawthorne supposed, from 
lack of sympathy. It seems as if the original 
sketch must have been made at that point. It 
is of a deep rich coloring, smoothly and deli- 
cately finished, — a painting that no one has yet 
been able to find fault with. Rev. Samuel Long- 
fellow, who knew almost every picture in the 
galleries of Europe, considered it equal to a 
Ruysdael, and he liked it better than a Ruys- 
dael. 

In the letter above referred to Cranch also 
writes : 

"Since your letter (a long time ago) I have 
written you a good many epistles (in a kind of 
invisible ink of my invention) which probably 
you have never received. 

"The truth is, I am a distinguished case of 
total depravity in the matter of correspond- 
ence. Letters ought to flow from one as easily 
and spontaneously as spoken words. But then 
one must write all the time and report life con- 
tinuously, as one does in speech. A letter does 
nothing but give some little detached morsel of 
one's life — and we say to ourselves what is the 



122 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

use of holding up to a friend three thousand 
miles off such unsatisfactory statements, such 
dribblings and droppings? ^ Write what is up- 
permost/ says one at your elbow. Ah, if we 
could only say what is uppermost ; as I sit down 
for instance to write (say this letter) I am 
caught into a sort of whirl of thoughts, in which 
it is impossible to say exactly what is foremost 
and what is hindmost. Then if I only attempt 
to narrate events, where am I to begin — so you 
see (I am theorizing about letters) a letter must 
be a sort of epitome of a friend's being and life 
or else nothing. Applying the theory to myself, 
finding myself unable to shut my genie in a box 
and carry him on my shoulders, I simply go and 
state that there is such a box with a genie sup- 
posed to be in it, lying at the custom-house, and 
here is the roughest sort of sketch of it,'* etc. 

This is characteristic of the man. He lived 
largely in an atmosphere of poetic pleasantry, 
which served as an alleviation to his cares and 
as an attraction to his friends. 

Cranch did not always succeed so well. He 
never became a mannerist, but there was too 
much similarity in his subjects, and the treat- 
ment too often bordered on the commonplace. 
Tintoretto said : ^ * Colors can be bought at the 
paint-shop, but good designs are only obtained 
by sleepless nights and much reflection.'' It 
is doubtful if Cranch ever laid awake over his 



CRANCH 123 

work, either in poetry or painting. He had a 
dreamy, phlegmatic disposition, which seemed 
to carry him through life without much effort 
of the will. He once confessed that when he 
was a boy he would never fire a gun for fear 
it might kick him over, and when he was at 
Hampton beach in 1875 he was in the habit of 
going out to sketch at a certain hour with pro- 
saic regularity. He did not seem to be on the 
watch, as an artist should, for rare effects of 
light and scenery, and he talked of art with very 
little enthusiasm. Yet he lived the true life of 
his profession, enjoying his work, contented 
with little praise, and without envy of those 
who were more fortunate. What is called 
odium artisticum was unknown to him. 

He was an unpretending, courteous Ameri- 
can gentleman. His disposition was perfect, 
and no one could remember having seen him 
out of temper. His pleasant flow of wit and 
humor, together with his varied accomplish- 
ments, made him a very brilliant man in society, 
and he counted among his friends the finest lit- 
erati in Eome, London, and the United States. 
He knew Thackeray as he knew Curtis and Low- 
ell, and was once dining with him in a London 
chop-house, when Thackeray said: '^Have you 
read the last number of The Newcombs? — if 
not, I will read it to you." Accordingly he 
gave the waiter a shilling to obtain the docu- 



124 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

ment, and read it aloud to Cranch and a friend 
who was with him.* Cranch could never under- 
stand this, for it was the last thing he would 
have done himself without an invitation; but 
he enjoyed the reading, and often referred to it. 

When he returned to America in 1863 he went 
to live on Staten Island in order to be near 
George William Curtis, who cared for him as 
Damon did for Pythias, and who served to 
counteract the ill-omened influence of Cranch 's 
brother-in-law. The Century Club purchased 
one of his pictures, an allegorical subject, which 
I believe still hangs in their halls. From 1873 
to 1877 Lowell would seem to have frequented 
Cranch 's house in preference to any other in 
Cambridge. 

When Cranch first went to live there he occu- 
pied a small but sunny and otherwise desirable 
house on the westerly side of Appian Way, — 
a name that amused him mightily, — but in 1876 
he purchased the house on the southwestern 
corner of Ellery and Harvard Streets. Having 
arranged his household goods there he sent one 
of his own paintings as a present to Emerson 
in order to renew their early acquaintance. 
Emerson responded to it by a characteristic 
note, in which he said that his son and daugh- 
ter, who were both good artists, had expressed 

* Both mentioned in Hawthorne's Notebook. 



CRANCH 125 

their approval of his present. He then referred 
to the danger which arises from a multiplicity 
of talents, and said : ' ^ I well recollect how you 
made the frogs vocal in the ponds back of 
Sleepy Hollow/' 

Cranch did not feel that this was very com- 
plimentary, but a few days later there came an 
invitation for Mr. and Mrs. Cranch to spend 
the day at Concord. Emerson met them at the 
railway station with his carryall. He had on 
an old cylinder hat which had evidently seen 
good service, and yet became him remarkably. 
He was interested to hear what George William 
Curtis thought about politics, and to find that it 
agreed closely with the opinion of his friend. 
Judge Hoar. The Cranchs had a delightful 
visit. 

Cranch 's baritone voice was like his poem, 
the ^^ Riddle," deep, rich and sonorous. He 
might have earned a larger income with it, per- 
haps, than he did by writing and painting. He 
sang comic songs in a manner peculiarly his 
own, — as if the words were enclosed in a paren- 
thesis, — as much as to say, ^^I do not approve 
of this, but I sing it just the same," and this 
made the performance all the more amusing. 
He sang Bret Harte's ^^Jim" in a very effec- 
tive manner, and he often sang the epitaph on 
Shakespeare's tomb, 

" Good friend, for Jesus sake forbears," 



126 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

as a recitative, both in English and Italian, — 
In questa tomha. He seemed to bring out a hid- 
den force in his singing, which was not appar- 
ent on ordinary occasions. His reading of 
poetry was also fine, but he depended in it 
rather too much on his voice, too little on the 
meaning of the verse. It was not equal to Celia 
Thaxter's reading. 

The same types of physiognomy continually 
reappear among artists. William M. Hunt 
looked like Horace Vernet, and Cranch in his 
old age resembled the Louvre portrait of Tin- 
toretto, although his features were not so 
strong. He used to say in jest that he was de- 
scended from Lucas Cranach, but that the sec- 
ond vowel had dropped out. He cared as little 
for the fashions as poets and artists commonly 
do, but there was no dandy in Boston who ap- 
peared so well in a full dress suit. 

In 1873 the Velasquez method of painting 
was in full vogue at Boston. Cranch did not 
believe in imitations, or in adopting the latest 
style from Paris, and he set himself against the 
popular hue-and-cry somewhat to his personal 
disadvantage. Charles Perkins and the other 
art scholars who founded the Art Museum in 
Copley Square were all on Cranch 's side, but 
that did not seem to help him with the public. 
*^They cannot bend the bow of Ulysses," said 
Cranch in some disgust. He preferred Murillo 



CRANCH . 127 

to Velasquez, and once liad quite an argument 
with William Hunt on the subject in Doll & 
Eichards's picture-store. Hunt asserted that 
there was no essential difference between a 
sketch and a finished picture, — he might have 
said there was no difference between a boy and 
a man, — that all the artist needed was to ex- 
press himself, and that it was immaterial in 
what way he did so. Cranch thought after- 
wards, though unfortunately it did not occur 
to him at the moment, that the test of such a 
theory would be its application to sculpture. 
He wondered what Raphael would have thought 
of it. 

It was quite a grief to Cranch that his own 
daughter, who inherited his talent, should have 
deserted him at this juncture, and gone over 
to the opposition. She filled his house with 
rough, heavily-shaded studies of still-life, 
flowers, and faces of her friends; but of all 
Hunt's pupils, Miss Cranch, Miss Knowlton, 
and Miss Lamb were the only ones who 
achieved artistic distinction in their special 
work. 

It was in order to withdraw her from this 
Walpurgis art-dance that Cranch undertook his 
last journey to Paris in his seventieth year. 
There the young lady quickly dropped her Bos- 
ton method, and, acquiring a more conservative 
handling, became an excellent portrait painter ; 



128 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

too soon, however, obliged to relinquish her art 
on account of ill-health. 

Cranch's landscapes now adorn the walls of 
private houses ; very largely the houses of his 
numerous friends. He did not paint in the 
fashion of the time, but like Millet followed a 
fashion of his own ; and I do not know of any 
of his pictures in public collections, although 
there are many that deserve the honor. The 
best landscape of his that I have seen was 
painted just before his last visit to Paris. It 
represents a low-toned sunset like the ^^Two 
Oaks^'; an autumnal scene on a narrow river, 
with maples here and there upon its banks. The 
sky is covered by a dull gray cloud, but in the 
west the sun shines through a low opening and 
gives promise of a better day. The peculiar 
liquid effect of the setting sun is wonderfully 
rendered, and the rich browns and russets of 
the foliage lead up, as it were, like a flight of 
steps to this final glory, — a restful and impres- 
sive scene. This landscape is not painted in the 
smooth manner of the ^'Two Oaks," but with 
soft, flakelike touches which slightly remind 
one of Murillo. Its coloring has the peculiarity 
that artificial light wholly changes its charac- 
ter, whereas Cranch's paintings, previous to 
1875, appear much the same by electric light 
that they do in daytime. It is called the ^ ^ Home 
of the Wood Duck.'' 



CRANCH 129 

Between 1870 and 1880 he published a num- 
ber of poems in the Atlantic Monthly as well as 
a longer piece called ' ' Satan, ' ' for which it was 
said by a certain wit that he received the devil's 
pay. His two books for young folks, ^^The 
Last of the Huggermuggers ' ' and ^^Kobbol- 
tozo, ' ' ought not to be overlooked, for the illus- 
trations in them are the only remains we have 
of his rare pencil drawings, as good, if not bet- 
ter, than Thackeray's drawings. 

It is likely that the parents read these stories 
with more pleasure than their children; for 
they not only contain a deal of fine wit, but 
there is a moral allegory running through them 
both. An American vessel is wrecked on a 
strange island, and the sailors who have escaped 
death are astonished at the gigantic proportions 
of the sand and the sea-shells, and of the bushes 
by the shore. Presently the Huggermuggers 
appear, and the American mariners in terror 
run to hide themselves ; but they soon find that 
these giants are the kindliest of human beings. 
There are also dwarfs on the island, larger than 
ordinary men, but small compared with the 
Huggermuggers. They are disagreeable, en- 
vious creatures, who wish to ruin the giants in 
order to have the island more entirely to them- 
selves. Having accomplished this in a some- 
what mysterious manner, they attempted to 
ijnprove their own stature by eating a certain 



130 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

shell-fish which had been the favorite food of 
the giants; but the shell-fish had also disap- 
peared with the Huggermuggers, and after 
searching for it a long time they finally sum- 
moned the Mer-King, the genius of the sea, who 
raised his head above the water in a secluded 
cove and spoke these verses: 

" Not in the Ocean deep and clear, 
Not on the Land so broad and fair, 
Not in the regions of boundless Air, 
Not in the Fire's burning sphere — 
'Tis not here — 'tis not there: 
Ye may seek it everywhere. 
He that is a dwarf in spirit 
Never shall the isle inherit. 
Hearts that grow 'mid daily cares 
Come to greatness unawares; 
Noble souls alone may know 
How the giants live and gTow." 

This is an allegory, but of very general appli- 
cation; and it has more especially a political 
application. Cranch may have intended it to 
illustrate the life of Alexander Hamilton. 

Cranch was not a giant himself, but he knew 
how to distinguish true greatness from the spu- 
rious commodity. Emerson considered his va- 
ried accomplishments his worst enemy ; but that 
depends on how you choose to look at it. It is 
probable enough that if Cranch had followed out 
a single pursuit to its perfection, and if he had 



CRANCH 131 

not lived so many years in Europe, he would 
have been a more celebrated man; but Cranch 
did not care for celebrity. He was content to 
live and to let live. Men of great force, like 
Macaulay and Emerson, who impress their per- 
sonality on the times in which they live, com- 
municate evil as well as good; but Cranch had 
no desire to influence his fellow men, and for 
this reason his influence was of a purer quality. 
It was like the art of Albert Diirer. No one 
could conceive of Cranch 's injuring anybody; 
and if all men were like him there would be no 
more wars, no need of revolutions. Force, 
however, is necessary to combat the evil that 
is already established. 

He died at his house on Ellery Street Janu- 
ary 20, 1890, as gently and peacefully as he had 
lived. There is an excellent portrait of him by 
Duveneck in the rooms of the University Club, 
at Boston ; but the sketch of his life, by George 
William Curtis, was refused on the ground that 
he was an Emersonian. The same objection 
might have been raised against Lowell, or Cur- 
tis himself with equally good reason. 



T. G. APPLETON. 

Thomas G. Appleton, universally known as 
^^Tom'' Appleton, was a notable figure during 
the middle of the last century not only in Bos- 
ton and Cambridge, but in Paris, Eome, Flor- 
ence, and other European cities. He was de- 
scended from one of the oldest and wealthiest 
families of Boston, and graduated from Har- 
vard in 1831, together with Wendell Phillips 
and George Lothrop Motley. He was not dis- 
tinguished in college for his scholarship, but 
rather as a wit, ahon vivant, and a good fellow. 
Yet his companions looked upon him as a strong 
character and much above the average in intel- 
lect. After taking his degree of Bachelor of 
Arts he went through the Law School, and at- 
tempted to practise that profession in Boston. 
At the end of the first year, happening to meet 
Wendell Phillips on the sidewalk, the latter in- 
quired if he had any clients. He had not; 
neither had Phillips, and they both agreed that 
waiting for fortune in the legal profession was 
wearisome business. They were both well 
adapted to it, and the only reason for their ill 
success would seem to have been that they be- 
longed to wealthy and rather aristocratic fam- 
ilies, amongst whom there is little litigation. 

At the same time Sumner was laying the f oun- 

132 



T. G. APPLETON 133 

dation by hard study for his future distinction 
as a legal authority, and Motley was discussing 
Goethe and Kant with the youthful Bismarck 
in Berlin. Wendell Phillips soon gave up his 
profession to become an orator in the anti-slav- 
ery cause; and Tom Appleton went to Rome 
and took lessons in oil painting. 

Nothing can be more superficial than to pre- 
sume that young men who write verses or study 
painting think themselves geniuses. A man 
may have a genius for mechanics ; and in most 
instances men and women are attracted to the 
arts from the elevating character of the occupa- 
tion. It is not likely that Tom Appleton con- 
sidered himself a genius, for although he had 
plenty of self-confidence, his opinion of himself 
was always a modest one. He painted the por- 
traits of some of his friends, but he never fairly 
made a profession of it. However, he learned 
the mechanism of pictorial art in this way, and 
soon became one of the best connoisseurs of his 
time. 

His finest enjoyment was to meet with some 
person, especially a stranger, with whom he 
could discuss the celebrated works in the gal- 
leries of Europe. He soon became known as a 
man who had something to say, and who knew 
how to say it. He told the Italian picture-deal- 
ers to cheat him as much as they could, and he 
gave amusing accounts of their various at- 
tempts to do this. He knew more than they did. 



134 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

After this time he lived as much in Europe 
as he did in America. Before 1860 he had 
crossed the Atlantic nearly forty times. The 
marriage of his sister to Henry W. Longfellow 
was of great advantage to him, for through 
Longfellow he made the acquaintance of many 
celebrated persons whom he would not other- 
wise have known, and being always equal to 
such occasions he retained their respect and 
good will. One might also say, '^What could 
Longfellow have done without himf^^ His con- 
versation was never forced, and the wit, for 
which he became as much distinguished in so- 
cial life as Lowell or Holmes, was never pre- 
meditated, often making its appearance on un- 
expected occasions to refresh his hearers with 
its sparkle and originality. 

In the ^^ Autocrat of the Breakfast Table'' 
Doctor Holmes quotes this saying by the ^'wit- 
tiest of men,'' that ''good Americans, when 
they die, go to Paris." Now this wittiest of 
men was Tom Appleton, as many of us knew 
at that time. He said of Leonardo da Vinci's 
"Last Supper" that it probably had faded out 
from being stared at by sightseers, and that 
the same thing might have happened to the 
Sistine Madonna if it had not been put under 
glass, — these being the two most popular paint- 
ings in Europe. His fund of anecdotes was 
inexhaustible. 



T. G. APPLETON 135 

Earlier in life he was occasionally given to 
practical jokes. A woman who kept a thread 
and needle store in Boston was supposed to 
have committed murder, and was tried for it 
but acquitted. One day, as Appleton was going 
by her place of business with a friend he said : 
^'Come in here with me; I want to see how 
that woman looks.'' Then surveying the prem- 
ises, as if he wished to find something to pur- 
chase, he asked her if she had any '^galluses'' 
for sale, — gallus being a shop-boy's term at the 
time for suspenders. 

When the Art Museum in Boston was first 
built its odd appearance attracted very general 
attention, and some one asked Tom Appleton 
what he thought of it. ^^Well," he said, ^^I 
have heard that architecture is a kind of frozen 
music, and if so I should call the Art Museum 
frozen 'Yankee Doodle.' " 

Thomas G. Appleton was no dilettante; his 
interest in the subject was serious and abiding. 
He did not wear his art as he did his gloves, nor 
did he turn it into an intellectual abstraction. 
There was nothing he disliked more than the 
kind of pretension which tries to make a knowl- 
edge of art a vehicle for self-importance. 
"Who," he said, ''ought not to feel humble 
before a painting of Titian's or Correggio'sl 
It is only when we feel so that we can appre- 
ciate a great work of art." He believed that 



136 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

an important moral lesson could be inculcated 
by a picture as well as by a poem, — even by a 
realistic Dutch painting. ^ ' Women worship the 
Venus of Milo now," he said, '^just as they did 
in ancient Greece, and it is good for them, 
too.'^ He respected William Morris Hunt 
as the best American painter of his time, but 
thought he would be a better painter if he were 
not so proud. Pride leads to arrogance, and 
arrogance is blinding. 

After he came into possession of his inheri- 
tance he showed that he could make a good use 
of money. One of his first acts was to purchase 
a set of engravings in the Vatican, valued at ten 
thousand dollars, for the Boston Public Li- 
brary. ^'I was not such a fool as to pay that 
sum for it, though, ' ' he remarked to Eev. Sam- 
uel Longfellow. He visited the studios of 
struggling artists in Rome and Boston, gave 
them advice and encouragement, — made pur- 
chases himself, sometimes, and advised his 
friends to purchase when he found a painting 
that was really excellent. He also purchased 
some valuable old paintings to adorn his house 
on Commonwealth Avenue. 

He placed two of these at one time on free ex- 
hibition at DolPs picture-store, and going into 
the rooms where they hung, I found Tom Ap- 
pleton explaining their merits to a group of 
remarkably pretty school-girls. 



T. G. APPLETON 137 

At the same moment, another gentleman who 
knew Mr. Appleton entered, and said, ^'Ah! a 
Palma Vecio, Mr. Appleton; how delightful! 
It is a Palma, is it notf 

'^That,^' replied Mr. Appleton, '4s probably 
a Palma ; but what do you say to this, which I 
consider a much better picture?'^ The gentle- 
man did not know; but it looked like Venetian 
coloring. 

''Quite right," said Mr. Appleton; "I 
bought it at the sale of a private collection in 
Eome, and it was catalogued as a Tintoretto, 
but I said, 'No, Bassano;' and it is the best 
Bassano I ever saw. The Italians call it 
'II Coconotte: '' 

Mr. Appleton had no intention of palming off 
doubtful paintings on his friends or the public ; 
but in regard to "/^ Coconotte^ ^ he was confi- 
dent of its true value, and rightly so. The 
painting, so called from a head in the group 
covered very thinly with hair, was the pride of 
his collection and one of the best of Bassano 's 
works. The other painting looked to me like a 
Palma, and I have always supposed that it was 
one. 

After this Mr. Appleton branched off on to 
an interesting anecdote concerning an Italian 
cicerone, and finally left his audience as well 
entertained as if they had been to the theatre. 

In 1871 he published a volume of poems for 



138 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

private circulation, in which there were a num- 
ber of excellent pieces, and especially two which 
deserve a place in any choice collection of 
American poetry. One is called the ^'Whip of 
the Sky" and relates to a subject which Mr. 
Appleton often dwelt upon, — the unnecessary 
haste and restlessness of American life, and is 
given here for the wider circulation which it 
amply deserves: 

The Whip of the Sky. 

Weary with travel, charmed with home, 
The youth salutes New England's air; 
Nor notes, within the azure dome, 
A vigilant, menacing figure there, 
Whose thonged hand swings 
A whip which sings: 
" Step, step, step," sings the whip of the sky : 
" Hurry up, move along, you can if you try !" 

Remembering Como's languid side, 

Where, pulsing from the citron deep. 
The nightingale's aerial tide 
Floats through the day, repose and sleep. 
Reclined in groves, — 
A voice reproves. 
" Step, step, step," cracks the whip of the sky : 
"Hurry up, jump along, rest when you die!" 

Slave of electric will, which strips 

From him the bliss of easeful hours; 
And bids, as from a tyrant's lips, 

Rest, quiet, fly, as useless flowers. 



T. G. APPLETON 139 

He wings his heart 

To make him smart. 
" Step, step, step," snaps the whip of the sky : 
" Hurry up, race along, rest when you die !" 

He maddens in the breathless race. 

Nor misses station, power or pelf; 
And only loses in the chase 

The hunted lord of all, — himself. 
His gain is loss, 
His treasure dross. 
" Step, step, step," mocks the whip of the sky, 
" Hurry up, limp along, rest when you die !" 

With care he burthens all his soul; 

Heaped ingots curve his willing back; 
Submissive to that fierce control, 
He needs at last the sky-whip's crack. 
Till at the grave. 
No more a slave, — 
" Rest, rest, rest," sighs the whip of the sky : 
" Hurry not, haste no more, rest when you die !" 

Celia Thaxter, the finest of poetic readers, 
read this to me one September morning at the 
Isles of Shoals, and at the conclusion she re- 
marked: ^^If that could only be read every 
year in our public schools it might do the 
American people some good.'' 

As compared with this, the sonnet on Pompeii 
has the effect of a strong complementary color, 
— for instance, like orange against dark blue. 
It echoes the pathetic reverie that we feel on 



140 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

beholding the monuments of the mighty past. 
It contains not the pathos of yesterday, nor of 
a hundred years ago, but as Emerson says, ^^of 
the time out of mind. ' ^ 

Pompeii. 

The silence there was what most haunted me. 

Long, speechless streets, whose stepping-stones invite 

Feet which shall never come; to left and right 

Gay colonnades and courts, — beyond, the glee. 

Heartless, of that forgetful Pagan sea. 

O'er roofless homes and waiting streets, the light 

Lies with a pathos sorrowfuler than night. 

Fancy forbids this doom of Life with Death 

Wedded; and with a wand restores the Life. 

The jostling throngs swarm, animate, beneath 

The open shops, and all the tropic strife 

Of voices, Roman, Greek, Barbarian, mix. The wreath 

Indolent hangs on far Vesuvius's crest; 

And beyond the glowing town, and guiltless sea, sweet rest. 

Tom Appleton was greatly interested in the 
performances of the -spiritualists, trance me- 
diums, and other persons pretending to super- 
natural powers. How far he believed in this 
occult science can now only be conjectured, but 
he was not a man to be easily played upon. He 
thought at least that there was more in it than 
was dreamed of by philosophers. When the 
Longfellow party was at Florence in April, 
1869, Prince George of Hanover, recently 
driven from his kingdom by Bismarck, called to 



T. G. APPLETON 141 

see the poet, and finding that he had gone out, 
was entertained by Mr. Appleton with some 
remarkable stories of hypnotic and spiritual- 
istic performances. The prince, who was a 
most amiable looking young German, was evi- 
dently very much interested. 

Deafness came upon Mr. Appleton in the last 
years of his life, though not so as to prevent his 
enjoying the society of those who had clear 
voices and who spoke distinctly. When one of 
his friends suggested that the trouble might be 
wax in his ears, he shook his head sadly and 
said: ^^Oh no: not wax, but wane.^^ 

He was finally taken ill while all alone in New 
York City, and the Longfellows were tele- 
graphed for. When one of his relatives 
came to him he spoke of his malady in a 
stoically humorous manner; and his last 
words were when he was dying: ^'How in- 
teresting this all is!'' A man never left this 
world with a more perfect faith in immortality ! 



DOCTOR HOLMES. 

I have often been inside the old Holmes house 
in Cambridge. It served as a boarding-house 
during our college days, but afterwards Pro- 
fessor James B. Thayer rented it for a term of 
years, until it was finally swept away like chaff 
by President Eliot's broom of reform. The 
popular notion that it was a quaint-looking 
old mansion of the eighteenth century, which 
seems to have been encouraged by Doctor 
Holmes himself, is a misconception. It was a 
two-and-a-half story, low-studied house, such as 
were built at the beginning of the last century, 
with a roof at an angle of forty-five degrees and 
a two-story ell on the right side of the front 
door. Doctor Holmes says : 

" Gambrel, gambrel ; let me beg 
You will look at a horse's hinder leg. 
First great angle above the hoof, — 
That is the gambrel j hence gambrel roof." 

Now, any one who looks carefully at the pic- 
ture of the old Holmes house, in Morse's biog- 
raphy of the Doctor, will perceive that this was 
not the style of roof which the house had, — at 
least, in its later years. 

Doctor Holmes graduated at Harvard in 1829 

142 



DOCTOR HOLMES 143 

at the age of twenty. His class has been a cele- 
brated one in Boston, and there were certainly 
some good men in it, — especially Benjamin 
Pierce and James Freeman Clarke, — but I 
think it was Doctor Holmes's class-poems that 
gave it its chief celebrity, which, after all, 
means that it was a good deal talked about. In 
one of these he said : 

"No wonder the tutor can^t sleep in his bed 
With two twenty-niners over his head." 

He was said to have composed twenty-nine 
poems for his class, and then declared that he 
had reached the proper limit, — that it would not 
be prudent to go beyond the magical number. 
It was not a dissipated class, but one with a 
good deal of life in it, much given to late hours 
and jokes, practical and unpractical. The Doc- 
tor himself is mysteriously silent concerning 
his college course, and so are his biographers ; 
but we may surmise that it was not very differ- 
ent in general tenor from Lowell's; although 
his Yankee shrewdness would seem to have pre- 
served him from serious catastrophes. 

In the ^^ Autocrat of the Breakfast Table'' 
Doctor Holmes mentions an early acquaintance 
with Margaret Fuller, which is not referred to 
by Mr. Morse, but must have arisen either at 
Mrs. Prentiss's Boston school or at the Cam- 
bridgeport school which young Oliver after- 



144 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

wards attended. Even at that age he recog- 
nized Margaret's intellectual gifts, and he was 
not a little emulous of her ; for he fancied that 
he ^^had also drawn a small prize in the great 
literary lottery/' He looked into one of her 
compositions, which was lying on the teacher's 
desk, and felt quite crest-fallen by discover- 
ing a word in it which he did not know the 
meaning of. This word was trite; and it may 
be suspected that a good many use it without 
being aware of its proper significance. 

Margaret Fuller rose to celebrity with the 
spontaneity of true genius, and left her name 
high upon the natural bridge of American liter- 
ature. Holmes did not come before the public 
until years after her death; and then perhaps 
it might not have happened but for James Eus- 
sell Lowell and the Atlantic. He was a bright 
man, and possessed a peculiar mental quality of 
his own; but as we think of him now we can 
hardly call him a genius. He would evidently 
have liked in his youth to have made a profes- 
sion of literature; but his verse lacked the 
charm and universality which made Longfellow 
popular so readily; nor did he possess the 
daring spirit of innovation with which Emer- 
son startled and convinced his contemporaries. 
He first tried the law, and as that did not suit 
his taste he fell into medicine, but evidently 
without any natural bent or inclination for the 



DOCTOR HOLMES 145 

profession. He was fond of the university, and 
when, after a temporary professorship at 
Dartmouth he was appointed lecturer on anat- 
omy at the Harvard Medical-School, his friends 
realized that he had found his right position. 

Lecturing on anatomy is a routine, but by no 
means a sinecure. It requires a clearness and 
accuracy of statement which might be compared 
to the work of an optician. Some idea of it can 
be derived from the fact that there may be eight 
or ten points to a human bone, each of which 
has a name of eight or ten syllables, — only to 
be acquired by the hardest study. Doctor 
Holmes's lecturing manner was incisive and 
sometimes pungent, like his conversation, but 
always good-humored and well calculated to 
make an impression even on the most lymphatic 
temperaments. While it may be said that oth- 
ers might have done it as well, it is doubtful if 
he could have been excelled in his own specialty. 
His ready fund of wit often served to revive 
the drooping spirits of his audience, and many 
of his jests have become a kind of legendary 
lore at the Medical-School. Most of them, how- 
ever, were of a too anatomical character to be 
reproduced in print. 

So the years rolled over Doctor Holmes's 
head; living quietly, working steadily, and ac- 
cumulating a store of proverbial wisdom by the 
way. In June, 1840, he married Amelia Lee 

10 



146 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

Jackson, of Boston, an alliance which brought 
him into relationship with half the families on 
Beacon Street, and which may have exercised a 
determining influence on the future course of 
his life. Doctor Holmes was always liberally 
inclined, and ready to welcome such social and 
political improvements as time might bring ; but 
he never joined any of the liberal or reforma- 
tory movements of his time. Certain old 
friends of Emerson affirmed, when Holmes 
published his biography of the Concord sage 
in 1885, that no one else was so much given 
to jesting as Emerson in his younger days. 
This may have been true; but it is also un- 
deniable that Emerson himself had changed 
much during that time, and that the socialistic 
Emerson of 1840 was largely a different per- 
son from the author of ' ' Society and Solitude. ' ' 
Holmes had already composed one of the fair- 
est tributes to Emerson's intellectual quality 
that has yet been written. 

" He seems a winged Franklin, heavenly wise, 
Born to unlock the secrets of the skies." 

Emerson began his course in direct apposition 
to the conventional world ; but he was the great 
magnet of the age, and the world could not help 
being attracted by him. It modified its course, 
and Emerson also modified his, so that the final 
reconciliation might take place. Meanwhile 



DOCTOR HOLMES 147 

Doctor Holmes pursued the even tenor of his 
way. Concord does not appear to have been 
attractive to him. He had a brother, John 
Holmes, who was reputed by his friends to be 
as witty as the ^^ Autocrat" himself, but who 
lived a quiet, inconspicuous life. John was an 
intimate friend of Hon. E. R. Hoar and often 
went to Concord to visit him ; but I never heard 
of the Doctor being seen there, though it may 
have happened before my time. He does not 
speak over-much of Emerson in his letters, and 
does not mention Hawthorne, Thoreau or Al- 
cott, so far as we know, at all. They do not 
appear to have attracted his attention. 

We are indebted to Lowell for all that Doc- 
tor Holmes has given us. The Doctor was 
forty-eight when the Atlantic Monthly appeared 
before the public, and according to his own con- 
fession he had long since given up hope of a 
literary life. We hardly know another instance 
like it; but so much the better for him. He 
had no immature efforts of early life to regret ; 
and when the cask once was tapped, the old 
wine came forth with a fine bouquet. When 
Phillips & Sampson consulted Lowell in re- 
gard to the editorship of the Atlantic, he said 
at once : ^ ^ We must get something from Oliver 
Wendell Holmes." He was Lowell's great dis- 
covery and proved to be his best card, — a 
clear, shining light, and not an ignis fatuus. 



148 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

When the ^^ Autocrat of the Breakfast 
Table ^' first appeared few were in the secret 
of its authorship and everybody asked: '^Who 
is this new luminary T' It was exactly what 
the more intelligent public wanted, and Holmes 
jumped at once into the position in literature 
which he has held ever since. Readers were de- 
lighted with his wit, surprised at his originality 
and impressed by his proverbial wisdom. It 
was the advent of a sound, healthy intelligence, 
not unlike that of President Lincoln, which 
could deal with common-place subjects in a sig- 
nificant and characteristic manner. The land- 
lady's daughter, the schoolmistress, little Bos- 
ton, and the young man called John, are as real 
and tangible as the dramatis personce in one of 
Moliere's plays. They seem more real to us 
than many of the distinguished men and women 
whom we read of in the newspapers. 

Doctor Holmes is the American Sterne. He 
did not seek a vehicle for his wit in the oddi- 
ties and mishaps of English middle-class do- 
mestic life, but in the contrasts and incongrui- 
ties of a Boston boarding-house. He informs 
us at the outset that he much prefers a family 
with an ancestry — one that has had a judge or 
a governor in it, with old family portraits, old 
books and claw-footed furniture; but if Doc- 
tor Holmes had depended on such society for 
his material he would hardly have interested 



DOCTOR HOLMES 149 

the public whom he addressed. One of Goethe's 
critics complained that the class of persons he 
had introduced in ^'Wilhelm Meister" did not 
belong to good society ; and to this the ' ^ aristo- 
cratic'' poet replied: ^' I have often been in 
society called good, from which I have not been 
able to obtain an idea for the shortest poem." 

So it is always : the interesting person is the 
one who struggles. After the struggle is over, 
and prosperity commences, the moral ends, — 
young Corey and his bride go off to Mexico. 
The lives of families are represented by those 
of its prominent individuals. The ambitious 
son of an old and wealthy family makes a new 
departure from former precedents, thus cre- 
ating a fresh struggle for himself, and becomes 
an orator, like Wendell Philips, or a scientist, 
like Darwin. 

In the ^^ Autocrat" we recognize the dingy 
wall-paper of the dining-room, the well-worn 
furniture, the cracked water-pitcher, and the 
slight aroma of previous repasts ; but we soon 
forget this unattractive background, for the 
scene is full of genuine human life. The men 
and women who congregate there appear for 
what they really are. They wear no mental 
masks and other disguises like the people we 
meet at fashionable entertainments; and each 
acts himself or herself. Boarding-houses, san- 
itariums, and sea voyages are the places to 



150 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

study human nature. When a man is half sea- 
sick the old original Adam shows forth in him 
through all the wrappings of education, social 
restraint, imitation and attempts at self-im- 
provement, with which he has covered it over 
for so many years. Once on a Cunard steam- 
ship I heard an architect from San Francisco 
tell the stor}^ of the hoop-snake, which takes its 
tail in its teeth and rolls over the prairies at a 
speed equal to any express train. He evidently 
believed the story himself, and as I looked 
round on the company I saw that they all be- 
lieved it, too, excepting Captain Martyn, who 
gave me a sly look from the corner of his eye. 
^' Eocked in the cradle of the deep,'^ they had 
become like children again, and were ready to 
credit anything that was told in a confident 
manner. But Doctor Holmes's digressions are 
infectious. 

The ^^ Autocrat of the Breakfast Table'' is 
an irregular panorama of human life without 
either a definite beginning or end, — unless the 
autocrat's offering himself to the schoolmis- 
tress (an incident which only took place on 
paper) can be considered so; but it is by no 
means a patchwork. He talks of horse-racing, 
the Millerites, elm trees, Doctor Johnson, the 
composition of poetry and much else ; but these 
subjects are introduced and treated with an 
adroitness that amounts to consummate art. 



DOCTOR HOLMES 151 

He is always at the boarding-house, and if his 
remarks sometimes shoot over the heads of 
his auditors, this is only because he intends 
that they should. The first ten or fifteen 
pages of the ^^ Autocrat'' are written in such 
a cold, formal and pedantic manner that the 
wonder is that Lowell should have published 
it. After that the style suddenly changes and 
the Doctor becomes himself. It is like a con- 
vention call which ends in a sympathetic con- 
versation. 

Doctor Holmes 's humor permeates every sen- 
tence that he wrote. Even in his most serious 
moods we meet with it in a peculiar phrase, or 
the use of some exceptional word. 

Now and then his wit is very brilliant, light- 
ing up its surroundings like the sudden appear- 
ance of a meteor. The essence of humor con- 
sists in a contrast which places the object or 
person compared at a disadvantage. If the 
contrast is a dignified one we have high com- 
edy ; but if the reverse, low comedy. Some of 
Holmes's comparisons make the reader laugh 
out aloud. He says that a tedious preacher or 
lecturer, with an alert listener in the audience, 
resembles a crow followed by a king-bird, — a 
spectacle which of itself is enough to make one 
smile ; and as for an elevated comparison, what 
could be more so, unless we were to seek one in 
the moon. There is a threefold wit in it; but 



152 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

the full force of this can only be appreciated 
in the original text. 

Nature commonly sets her own stamp on the 
face of a humorist. The long pointed nose of 
Cervantes is indicative of immeasurable fun, 
and there have been many similar noses on the 
faces of less distinguished wits. Doctor Holmes 
ridiculed phrenology as an attempt to estimate 
the money in a safe by the knobs on the outside, 
but he evidently was a believer in physiognomy, 
and he exemplified this in his own case. His 
face had a comical expression from boyhood; 
its profile reminded one of those prehistoric 
images which Di Cesnola brought from Cyprus. 
As if he were conscious of this he asserted his 
dignity in a more decided manner than a man 
usually does who is confident of the respect of 
those about him. Thus he acquired a style of 
his own, different from that of any other person 
in Boston. He was not a man to be treated with 
disrespect or undue familiarity. 

A medical student named Holyoke once had 
occasion to call on him, and as soon as he 
had introduced himself Doctor Holmes said: 
i i There, me friend, stand there and let me take 
an observation of you." He then fetched an old 
book from his library which contained a por- 
trait of Holyoke 's grandfather, who had also 
been a physician. He compared the two faces, 
saying; *' Forehead much the same; nose not 



DOCTOR HOLMES 153 

SO full ; mouth rather more feminine ; chin not 
quite so strong ; but on the whole a very good 
likeness, and I have no doubt you will make 
an excellent doctor.'' After Holyoke had ex- 
plained his business Doctor Holmes finally 
said: ''I liked your grandfather, and shall 
always be glad to see you here." 

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., was class poet 
of 1861, an honor which pleased his father very 
much. Immediately after graduating he went 
to the war, and came near losing his life at the 
battle of Antietam. A rifle-ball passed through 
both lungs, and narrowly missed his heart. 
Alexander Hamilton died of exactly such a 
wound in seven hours; and yet in three days 
Captain Holmes was able to write to his father. 
The Doctor started at once for the seat of war, 
and met with quite a series of small adventures 
which he afterwards described in a felicitous ar- 
ticle in the Atlantic, called ''My Hunt after the 
Captain." His friend. Dr. Henry P. Bow- 
ditch, lost his son in the same battle, and when 
they met at the railway depot Holmes said: ''I 
would give my house to have your fortune like 
mine." 

In a letter to Motley dated February 3, 1862, 
he says : 

' ' I was at a dinner at Parker 's the other day 
where Governor Andrew and Emerson, and 
various unknown dingy-linened friends of 



154 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

progress met to hear Mr. Conway, the not 
unfamous Unitarian minister of Washington, 
— Virginia-born, with seventeen secesh cousins, 
fathers, and other relatives, — tell of his late 
experience at the seat of Government. He is 
an out-and-ont immediate emancipationist, — 
believes that is the only way to break the 
strength of the South; that the black man is 
the life of the South; that they dread work 
above all things, and cling to the slave as the 
drudge that makes life tolerable to them. I 
do not know if his opinion is worth much.'' 

This was a meeting of the Bird Club which 
Doctor Holmes attended and the dingy-linened 
friends of progress were such men as Dr. Sam- 
uel G. Howe, Governor Washburn, Governor 
Claflin, Dr. Estes Howe, and Frank B. San- 
born. It has always been a trick of fashion- 
able society, a trick as old as the age of 
Pericles, to disparage liberalism by accusing 
it of vulgarity; but we regret to find Doctor 
Holmes falling into line in this particular. He 
always speaks of Sumner in his letters with 
something like a slur — not to Motley, for Mot- 
ley was Sumner's friend, but to others who 
might be more sympathetic. This did not, how- 
ever, prevent him from going to Sumner in 
1868 to ask a favor for his second son, who 
wanted to be private secretary to the Senator 
and learn something of foreign affairs. Sum- 



DOCTOR HOLMES 155 

ner granted the request, although he must have 
been aware that the Doctor was not over- 
friendly to him; but it proved an unfortunate 
circumstance for Edward J. Holmes, who con- 
tracted malaria in Washington, and this finally 
resulted in an early death. 

Why is it that members of the medical pro- 
fession should take an exceptional interest in 
poisonous reptiles? Professor Reichert and 
Dr. S. Weir Mitchell spent a large portion of 
their leisure hours for several years in experi- 
menting with the virus of rattlesnakes, and of 
the Gila monster, without, however, quite ex- 
hausting the subject. Doctor Holmes kept a 
rattlesnake in a cage for a pet, and was accus- 
tomed to stir it up with an ox-goad. A New 
York doctor lost his life by fooling with a 
poisonous snake, and another in Liverpool 
frightened a whole congregation of scientists 
with two torpid rattlesnakes which suddenly 
came to life on the president's table. Does it 
arise from their custom of dealing with deadly 
poisons, or is it because they officiate as the 
high priests of mortality? 

Doctor Holmes's ^^ Elsie Venner" was one of 
the offshoots of this peculiar medical interest, 
and when we think of it in that light the story 
seems natural enough. The idea of a snaky 
woman is as old as the fable of Medusa. I read 
the novel when I was fifteen, and it made as 



156 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 



decided an impression on me as ^'Ivanhoe'' or 
*^ Pickwick." I remember especially a pro- 
verbial saying of the old doctor who serves as 
the presiding genius of the plot : he knew ' ^ the 
kind of people who are never sick but what they 
are going to die, and the other kind who never 
know they are sick until they are dead." If 
Doctor Holmes had taken this as his text, and 
written a novel on those lines, he might have 
created a work of far-reaching importance. He 
appears to have known very little concerning 
poisonous reptiles ; had never heard of the ter- 
rible fer-de-lance, which infests the cane- 
swamps of Brazil — a snake ten feet in length 
which strikes without warning and straight as 
a fencer's thrust. But ''Elsie Venner" and 
Holmes's second novel, ''The Guardian An- 
gel," are, to use Lowell's expression on a 
different subject: 

"As full of wit, gumption and good Yankee sense, 
As there are mosses on an old stone fence." 

In the autumn of 1865 some Harvard stu- 
dents, radically inclined, obtained possession of 
a religious society in the college called the 
Christian Union, revolutionized it and changed 
its name to the Liberal Fraternity. They then 
invited Emerson, Henry James, Sr., Doctor 
Holmes, and Colonel Higginson to deliver lec- 
tures in Cambridge under their auspices. This 



DOCTOR HOLMES 157 

was a pretty bold stroke, but Holmes evidently 
liked it. He said to the committee that waited 
upon him : ^ ' What is your rank and file ? How 
deep do you go down into the class!" He also 
promised to lecture, and that he did not was 
more the fault of the students than his own. He 
was by no means a radical in religious matters, 
but he hated small sectarian differences — the 
substitution of dogma for true religious feel- 
ing. In his poem at the grand Harvard celebra- 
tion in 1886 he made a special point of this 
principle : 

" For nothing burns with such amazing speed 
As the dry sticks of a religious creed." 

Creeds are necessary, however, and an enlight- 
ened education teaches us not to value them 
above their true worth. 

In 1867 Doctor Holmes published a volume of 
poetry which was generally well received, but 
was criticised in the Nation with needless and 
unmerciful severity. Kev. Edward Everett 
Hale and other friends of his had already been 
attacked in the same periodical, and the Doctor 
thought he knew the man who did it; but 
whether he was right in his conjecture cannot 
be affirmed. There can be no doubt that these 
diatribes were written by a Harvard professor 
who owned a large interest in the Nation, and 
who was obliged to go to Europe the following 
year in order to escape the odium of an impru- 



158 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

dent speech at a public dinner. In this cri- 
tique Holmes's poetry was summed up under 
the heading of ''versified misfortunes''; and 
Holmes himself wrote to Mrs. Stowe that the 
object of the writer was evidently ''to injure 
at any rate, and to wound if possible." 

It was certainly contemptible to treat a man 
like Doctor Holmes in this manner, — one so uni- 
versally kind to others, and whose work was 
always, at least, above mediocrity. He behaved 
in a dignified manner in regard to it, and he 
made no attempt at self-justification, although 
the wound was evidently long in healing. What 
recourse has a man who places himself before 
the public against the envenomed shafts of an 
invisible adversary? Of this at least we may be 
satisfied, that whatever is extravagant and 
overwrought always brings its own reaction in 
due course; and Doctor Holmes's reputation 
does not appear to have suffered permanently 
from this attack. The general public, especially 
the republic of womankind, forms its own opin- 
ion, and pays slight attention to literary criti- 
cisms of that description. 

Holmes's poetry rarely rises to eloquence, but 
neither does it descend to sentimentality. It re- 
sembles the man's own life, in which there were 
no bold endeavors, great feats, or desperate 
struggles ; but it was a life so judicious, health- 
ful and highly intellectual that we cannot help 



DOCTOR HOLMES 159 

admiring it. ''Dorothy Q." is perhaps the best 
of his short poems, as it is the most widely 
known. The name itself is slightly humorous, 
but it is a perfect work of art, and the line, 

" Soft and low is a maiden's ' Yes,' " 

has the beautiful hush of a sanctuary in it. A 
finer verse could not be written. Also for a 
comic piece nothing, equal to ' ' The Wonderful 
One-hoss Shay'' has appeared since Burns 's 
''Tam O'Shanter.'' It is based on a logical 
illusion which brings it down to recent times, 
and the gravity with which the story is narrated 
makes its impossibility all the more amusing. 
The building of the chaise is described with a 
practical accuracy of detail, and yet with a 
poetical turn to every verse : 

" The hubs of logs from the ' Settler's ellum',— 
Last of its timber, — they couldn't sell 'em; 
Never an axe had seen their chips, 
And the wedges flew from between their lips. 
Their blunt ends frizzled like celeiy-tips" ; 

I believe that even cultivated readers have 
found more real satisfaction in the ''One-Hoss 
Shay'' than in many a more celebrated lyric. 

Doctor Holmes lived amid a comparatively 
narrow circle of friends and acquaintances. He 
attended the Saturday Club, but Lowell appears 
to have been the only member of it with whom 
he was on confidential terms. He was rarely 



160 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

seen or heard of in Longfellow's house. In the 
winter of 1878 he met Mrs, L. Maria Child for 
the first time at the Chestnut Street Club. It 
appears that she did not catch his name when he 
was introduced to her, and stranger still did not 
recognize his face. When the Doctor inquired 
concerning her literary occupation she replied 
that she considered herself too old to drive a 
quill any longer, and then fortunately added: 
*^Now, there is Doctor Holmes, I think he 
shows his customary good judgment in retiring 
from the literary field in proper season.'' What 
the Doctor thought of this is unknown, but he 
still continued to write. 

At the age of seventy his alma mater con- 
ferred on Doctor Holmes an LL.D., and this was 
followed soon afterwards by Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, in England; but why was it not given 
ten or fifteen years earlier, when Holmes was in 
his prime? Then it might have been a service 
and a satisfaction to him; but when a man is 
seventy such tributes have small value for him. 
There had been an Atlantic breakfast for Doc- 
tor Holmes in Boston, and a Holmes breakfast 
in New York. He was in the public eye, and by 
honoring him the University honored itself. So 
Harvard conferred an LL.D. on General Win- 
field Scott just before the fatal battle of Bull 
Run, — instead of after his brilliant Mexican 
campaign. If the degree was not conferred on 



DOCTOR HOLMES 161 

Holmes for Ms literary work, what reason could 
be assigned for it ; and if he deserved it on that 
account, Emerson and Hawthorne certainly de- 
served it much more. Let ns be thankful that 
no such mischief was contemplated. If hon- 
orary degrees are to be given in order to attract 
attention to a university, or worse still, for the 
purpose of obtaining legacies, they had better 
be abolished altogether. 

During his last visit to England Doctor 
Holmes was the guest of F. Max Muller at Ox- 
ford, and years afterwards Professor Muller 
wrote to an American correspondent concerning 
him and others : 

'^Froude was a dear friend of mine, related 
to my wife ; so was Kingsley — dear soul. Re- 
nan used to fetch books for me when we first 
met at the Bibliothique Eoyale. Emerson 
stayed at my house on his last visit here. But 
the best of all my American friends was Wen- 
dell Holmes. When he left us he said, ^I have 
talked to thousands of people — you are the only 
one with whom I have had a conversation. ' We 
had talked about -^a ixiyiexa — the world as the 
logos, as the thought of God. What a pure 
soul his was — a real Serene Highness." 

This is trancendentalism from the fountain- 
head; and here Doctor Holmes may fairly be 
said to have avenged himself on the Nation^ s 
excoriating critic. 

11 



FEANK W. BIRD, AND THE BIRD CLUB. 

It is less than four miles from Harvard 
Square to Boston City Hall, a building rather 
exceptional for its fine architecture among pub- 
lic edifices, but the change in 1865 was like the 
change from one sphere of human thought and 
activity to another. In Boston politics was ev- 
erything, and literature, art, philosophy noth- 
ing, or next to nothing. There was mercantile 
life, of course, and careworn merchants anx- 
iously waiting about the gold-board ; but there 
were no tally-ho coaches ; there was no golf or 
polo, and very little yachting. Fashionable so- 
ciety was also at a low ebb, and as Wendell 
Phillips remarked in 1866, the only parties were 
boys' and girls' dancing-parties. A large pro- 
portion of the finest young men in the city had, 
like the Lowells, shed their blood for the Repub- 
lic. The young people danced, but their elders 
looked grave. 

At this time the political centre of Massachu- 
setts and, to a certain extent of New England, 
was the Bird Club, which met every Saturday 
afternoon at Young's Hotel to dine and discuss 
the affairs of the nation. Its membership 
counted both Senators, the Governor, a number 
of ex-Governors and four or five members of 

162 



.^mss^^^. 



I 




F. W. BIRD 






FRANK W. BIRD 163 

Congress. They were a strong team when they 
were all harnessed together. 

Francis William Bird, the original organizer 
of the club, was born in Dedham, October 22, 
1809, and the only remarkable fact concerning 
his ancestry would seem to be that his great- 
grandmother was a Hawthorne, of the same 
family as Nathaniel Hawthorne ; but there was 
no trace of that strongly-marked lineage in his 
composition. As a boy he was quick at mathe- 
matics, but not much of a student, so that he 
was full eighteen years of age before he entered 
Brown University. His college course also left 
him in a depleted physical condition, and it was 
several years later when he commenced the 
actual labor of life. His father had intended 
him for the law; but this did not agree with 
his health, and his physician advised a more 
active employment. Accordingly we find him 
in 1835 engaged in the manufacture of paper 
at East Walpole, an occupation in which he 
continued until 1892, — always suffering from 
dyspepsia, but always equal to whatever occa- 
sion demanded of him. He was a tall, thin, 
wiry-looking man, with a determined expres- 
sion, but of kind and friendly manners. 

He must have been a skilful man of business, 
for all the great financial storms of the half 
century, in which he lived and worked, rolled 
over him without causing him any serious em- 



164 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

barrassment. His note was always good, and 
his word was as good as his note. He always 
seemed to have money enough for what he 
wanted to do. In prosperous times he spent 
generously, although habitually practising a 
kind of stoical severity in regard to his pri- 
vate affairs. He considered luxury the bane 
of wealth, and continually admonished his chil- 
dren to avoid it. He was an old-fashioned 
Puritan with liberal and progressive ideas. 

After his marriage in 1843 to Miss Abigail 
Frances Newell, of Boston, he built a commo- 
dious house in a fine grove of chestnuts on a 
hill-side at East Walpole ; and there he brought 
up his children like Greeks and Amazons. 
Chestnut woods are commonly infested with 
hornets, but he directed us boys not to mo- 
lest them, for he wished them to learn that 
hornets would not sting unless they were in- 
terfered with ; an excellent principle in human 
nature. Mrs. Bird resembled her husband so 
closely in face and figure, that they might have 
been mistaken for brother and sister. She was 
an excellent New England woman of the old 
style, and well adapted to make her husband 
comfortable and happy. 

The connection between manufacturing and 
politics is a direct and natural one. A man who 
employs thirty or forty workmen, and treats 
them fairly, can easily obtain an election to the 



FRANK W. BIRD 165 

Legislature without exercising any direct in- 
fluence over them; but Frank Bird's workmen 
felt that he had a personal interest in each one 
of them. He never was troubled with strikes. 
When hard times came his employees submitted 
to a reduction of wages without murmuring, 
and when business was good they shared again 
in the general prosperity. As a consequence Mr. 
Bird could go to the Legislature as often as he 
desired ; and when he changed from the Repub- 
lican to the Democratic party, in 1872, they still 
continued to vote for him, until at the age of 
seventy-one he finally retired from public life. 

On one election day he is said to have called 
his men together, and to have told them : ^ ^ You 
will have two hours this afternoon to cast your 
votes in. The mill will close at 4 o 'clock, and I 
expect every man to vote as I do. Now I am 
going to vote just as I please, and I hope you 
will all do the same ; but if any one of my men 
does not vote just as he wants to, and I find it 
out, I will discharge him to-morrow. ' ' One can 
imagine Abraham Lincoln making a speech like 
this, on a similar occasion. 

Frank W. Bird, like J. B. Sargent, of New 
Haven, was a rare instance of an American 
manufacturer who believed in free-trade. This 
was one reason why he joined the Democratic 
party in 1872. He considered that protection 
encouraged sleazy and fraudulent work, and 



166 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

placed honest manufacturers at a disadvan- 
tage; though he obtained these ideas rather 
from reading English magazines than from 
any serious study of his own. He was natu- 
rally much more of a Democrat than a Whig, 
or Federalist, but he opposed the doctrine of 
State Rights, declaring that it was much more 
responsible for the Civil War than the anti- 
slavery agitation was. 

The same political exigency which roused 
James Russell Lowell also brought Francis Wil- 
liam Bird before the public. In company with 
Charles Francis Adams he attended the Buffalo 
convention, in 1848, and helped to nominate 
Martin Van Buren for the Presidency. He was, 
however, doing more effective work by assisting 
Elizur Wright in publishing the Chronotype (the 
most vigorous of all the anti-slavery papers), 
both with money and writing ; and in a written 
argument there were few who could equal him. 
He appears to have been the only person at that 
time who gave Elizur Wright much support and 
encouragement. 

In 1850 Bird was elected to the State Legisla- 
ture and worked vigorously for the election of 
Sumner the ensuing winter. His chief asso- 
ciates during the past two years had been 
Charles Francis Adams, the most distinguished 
of American diplomats since Benjamin Frank- 
lin, John A. Andrew, then a struggling lawyer. 



FRANK W. BIRD 167 

and Henry L. Pierce, afterwards Mayor of Bos- 
ton. Now a greater name was added to them; 
for Snmner was not only an eloquent orator, 
perhaps second to Webster, but he had a world- 
wide reputation as a legal authority. 

Adams, however, failed to recognize that like 
his grandfather he was living in a revolutionary 
epoch, and after the Kansas struggle com- 
menced he became continually more conserva- 
tive — if that is the word for it — and finally in 
his Congressional speech in the winter of 1861 
he made the fatal statement that personally he 
would be ' 4n favor of permitting the Southern 
States to secede,'' although he could not see 
that there was any legal right for it. This acted 
as a divider between him and his former asso- 
ciates, until in 1876 he found himself again in 
the same party with Frank W. Bird. 

During the administration of Governor Banks, 
that is, between 1857 and 1860, Bird served on 
the Governor's council, although generally in 
opposition to Banks himself. He went as a del- 
egate to the Chicago Convention of 1860, where 
he voted at first for Seward, and afterwards for 
Lincoln. From that time forward, until 1880, 
he was always to be found at the State House, 
and devoted so much time to public affairs that 
it is a wonder his business of paper manufac- 
turing did not suffer from it. Yet he always 
seemed to have plenty of time, and was never so 



168 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

much absorbed in what he was doing but that he 
could give a cordial greeting to any of his 
numerous friends. His face would beam with 
pleasure at the sight of an old acquaintance, and 
I have known him to dash across the street like 
a school-boy in order to intercept a former 
member of the Legislature who was passing by 
on the other side. Such a man has a good heart. 

Frank Bird's abilities fitted him for higher 
positions than he ever occupied ; but he was so 
serviceable in the Legislature that all his 
friends felt that he ought to remain there. He 
was inexorable in his demand for honest gov- 
ernment, and when he rose to speak all the 
guilty consciences in the house began to trem- 
ble. He was the terror of the lobbyist, and of 
the legislative log-roller. This made him many 
enemies, but he expected it and knew how to 
meet them. He was especially feared while An- 
drew was Governor, for every one knew that he 
had consulted with Andrew before making his 
motion. He was the Governor's man of busi- 
ness. 

He came to know the character of every poli- 
tician in the State, — what his opinions were, 
and how far he could be depended on. In this 
way he also became of great service to Sumner 
and Wilson, who wished to know what was tak- 
ing place behind their backs while they were 
absent at Washington. Sumner did not trouble 



FRANK W. BIRD 169 

himself much as to public opinion, but this was 
of great importance to Wilson, who depended 
on politics for his daily bread. Both, however, 
wanted to know the condition of affairs in their 
own State, and they found that Frank Bird's 
information was always trustworthy, — for he 
had no ulterior object of his own. 

Thus he acquired much greater influence in 
public affairs than most of the members of Con- 
gress. When Mr. Baldwin, who represented his 
district, retired in 1868, Frank Bird became a 
candidate for the National Legislature, but he 
suffered from the disadvantage of living at the 
small end of the district, and the prize was car- 
ried off by George F. Hoar, afterwards United 
States Senator; but going to Congress in the 
seventies was not what it had been in the fifties 
and sixties, when the halls of the Capitol re- 
sounded with the most impressive oratory of 
the nineteenth century. 

Frank Bird did not pretend to be an orator. 
His speeches were frank, methodical and di- 
rectly to the point; and very effective with 
those who could be influenced by reason, with- 
out appeals to personal prejudice. He hated 
flattery in all its forms, and honestly confessed 
that the temptation of public speakers to cajole 
their audiences was the one great demon of a 
democratic government. He liked Wendell 
Phillips on account of the manly way in which 



170 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

he fought against his audiences, and strove to 
bring them round to his own opinion. 

He was as single-minded as Emerson or Lin- 
coln. In November, 1862, Emerson said to me : 
*'I came from Springfield the other day in the 
train with your father's friend, Frank Bird, 
and I like him very much. I often see his name 
signed to newspaper letters, and in future I 
shall always read them. ' ' Strangely enough, a 
few days later I was dining with Mr. Bird and 
he referred to the same incident. When I in- 
formed him that Emerson had also spoken of it 
he seemed very much pleased. 

If any one paid him a compliment or ex- 
pressed gratitude for some act of kindness, he 
would hesitate and become silent for a moment, 
as if he were reflecting whether he deserved it 
or not; and then would go on to some other 
subject. 

His acts of kindness were almost numberless. 
He assisted those whom others would not as- 
sist; and if he suspected that a small office- 
holder was being tyrannized over, he would 
take no rest until he had satisfied himself of the 
truth of the case. In February, 1870, he learned 
that a high official in the Boston Post-office, who 
was supported in his position by the Governor 
of the State, was taking advantage of this to 
levy a blackmail on his subordinates, compelling 
them to pay him a commission in order to retain 



FRANK W. BIRD 171 

their places. Frank Bird was furious with hon- 
est indignation. He said: ^'I will go to Wash- 
ington and have that man turned out if I have 
to see Grant himself for it " ; and so he did. 

One evening at Walpole a poor woman came 
to him in distress, because her only son had 
been induced to enlist in the Navy, and was 
already on board a man-of-war at the Boston 
Navy-yard. Mr. Bird knew the youth, and was 
aware that he was very slightly feeble-minded. 
The vessel would sail in three days, and there 
was no time to be lost. He telegraphed the facts 
as briefly as possible to Senator Wilson, and in 
twenty-four hours received an order to have the 
widow's son discharged. Then he would not 
trust the order to the commandant, who might 
have delayed its execution, but sent it to an 
agent of his own in the Navy-yard, who saw 
that the thing was done. 

Frank Bird's most distinguished achievement 
in politics was the nomination of Andrew for 
Governor in 1860. Governor Banks was not 
favorable to Andrew and his friends, and used 
what influence he possessed for the benefit of 
Henry L. Dawes. An organization for the nom- 
ination of Dawes had already been secretly 
formed before Frank Bird was acquainted with 
Banks's retirement from the field. Bird and 
Henry L. Pierce were at Plymouth when they 
first heard of it, about the middle of July, and 



172 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

they immediately returned to Boston, started 
a bureau, opened a subscription-list, and with 
the cooperation of the Bird Club carried the 
movement through. It would have made a 
marked difference in public affairs during the 
War for the Union if Dawes had been Governor 
instead of Andrew.* 

Frank Bird had this peculiarity, that the 
more kindly he felt to those who were unfortu- 
nate in life, the more antagonistic he seemed to 
those who were exceptionally prosperous. He 
appeared to have a sort of spite against hand- 
some men and women, as if nature had been 
over-partial to them in comparison with others. 
He was not a pedantic moralist, but at the same 
time rather exacting in his requirements of 
others, as he was of himself. 

The Bird Club was evolved out of the condi- 
tions of its times, like a natural growth. Its 
nucleus was formed in the campaign of 1848, 
when Bird, Andrew, Henry L. Pierce, and Wil- 
liam S. Robinson fell into the habit of dining 
together and discussing public affairs every 
Saturday afternoon. It was not long before 
they were joined by Elizur Wright and Henry 
Wilson. Sumner came to dine with them, when 



* Dawes was an excellent man in his way, but during 
eighteen years in the United States Senate he never made 
an important speech. 



FRANK W. BIRD 173 

he was not in Washington, and Dr. S. G. Howe 
came with him. The Kansas excitement brought 
in George L. Stearns and Frank B. Sanborn, — 
one the president and the other the secretary of 
the Kansas Aid Society. In 1860 the club had 
from thirty to forty members, and during the 
whole course of its existence it had more than 
sixty members ; but it never had any regular 
organization. A member could bring a friend 
with him, and if the friend was liked, Mr. Bird 
would invite him to come again. No vote ever 
appears to have been taken. Mr. Bird sat at 
the head of the table, and if he was late or ab- 
sent his place would be supplied by George L. 
Stearns. At his right hand sat Governor An- 
drew, and either Sumner or Stearns on his left. 
Doctor Howe and Wilson sat next to them, and 
were balanced on the opposite side by Sanborn, 
Governor Washburn, and two or three mem- 
bers of Congress. However, there was no sys- 
tematic arrangement of the guests at this feast, 
although the more important members of the 
club naturally clustered about Mr. Bird. 

N. P. Banks never appeared there, either as 
Governor or General; and from this it was 
argued that he was ambitious to become Sena- 
tor ; or it may have been owing to his differences 
with Bird, while the latter was on the Govern- 
or's Council. In this way the Bird Club be- 
came the test of a man's political opinion, and 



174 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

prominent politicians who absented themselves 
from it were looked upon with more or less dis- 
trust. 

The discussions at the club were frank, manly, 
and unreserved. Members who talked from the 
point were likely to be corrected without cere- 
mony, and sometimes received pretty hard 
knocks. On one occasion General B. F. Butler, 
who had come into the club soon after his cele- 
brated contraband-of-war order, was complain- 
ing that the New York Republicans had nomi- 
nated General Francis C. Barlow for Secretary 
of State, and that General Barlow had not been 
long enough in the Eepublican party to deserve 
it, when Robinson replied to him that Barlow 
had been a Republican longer than some of 
those present, and Frank Bird remarked that he 
was as good a Republican as any that were 
going. Butler looked as if he had swallowed 
a pill. 

William S. Robinson was at once the wit and 
scribe of the club, and the only newswriter that 
was permitted to come to the table. He enjoyed 
the advantage of confidential talk and authentic 
information, which no other writer of that time 
possessed, and his letters to the Springfield 
Republican, extending over a period of fifteen 
years, come next in value to the authentic docu- 
ments of that important period. They pos- 
sessed the rare merit of a keen impartiality, 



FRAISTK W. BIRD 175 

and though sometimes rather sharp, were never 
far from the mark. He not only criticised Grant 
and the political bosses of that time, but his 
personal friends, Sumner, Wilson, and Frank 
Bird himself. 

In 1872 Emerson said to a member of the 
club: ^^I do not like William Eobinson. His 
hand is against every man''; but it is doubtful 
if Robinson ever published so hard a criticism 
of any person, and certainly none so unjust. 
Emerson without being aware of it was strongly 
influenced by a cabal for the overthrow of Rob- 
inson, in which General Butler took a leading 
hand. Robinson was clerk of the State Senate, 
and could not afford to lose his position ; after- 
wards, when he did lose it, he fell sick and died. 
He preferred truth-telling and poverty to a 
compromising prosperity, and left no one to fill 
his place. 

Frank B. Sanborn was for a time editor of 
the Boston Commonwealth, and afterwards of 
the Springfield Republican; but he was better 
known as the efficient Secretary of the Board 
of State Charities, a position to which he was 
appointed by Governor Andrew, and from 
which he was unjustly removed by Governor 
Ames, twenty years later. He was an indefat- 
igable worker, and during that time there was 
not an almshouse or other institution, public 
or private, in the State for the benefit of the 



176 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

unfortunate portion of mankind where he was 
not either feared or respected — a man whose 
active principle was the conscientious perform- 
ance of duty. He was also noted for his fidelity 
to his friends. He cared for the family of John 
Brown and watched over their interests as if 
they had been his own family ; he made a home 
for the poet Channing in his old age, and was 
equally devoted to the Alcotts and others, who 
could not altogether help themselves. He was 
himself a charitable institution. 

Henry Wilson is also worth a passing notice, 
for the strange resemblance of his life to Presi- 
dent Lincoln's, if for no other reason. His 
name was originally Colbath, and he was re- 
puted to have been born under a barbery-bush 
in one of the green lanes of New Hampshire. 
The name is an exceptional one, and the family 
would seem to have been of the same roving 
Bedouin-like sort as that of Lincoln's ancestors. 
He began life as a shoemaker, was wholly self- 
educated, and changed his name to escape from 
his early associations. He would seem to have 
absorbed all the virtue in his family for several 
generations. No sooner had he entered into pol- 
itics than he was recognized to have a master 
hand. He rose rapidly to the highest position in 
the gift of his State, and finally to be Vice-Pres- 
ident. If his health had not given way in 1873 
he might even have become President in the 



FRANK W. BIRD 177 

place of Hayes; for lie was a person whom 
every man felt that he could trust. His loy- 
alty to Sumner bordered on veneration, and 
was the finest trait in his character. There 
was no pretense in Henry Wilson's patriot- 
ism; everyone felt that he would have died 
for his country. 

In 1870 General Butler disappeared from the 
club, to the great relief of Sumner and his im- 
mediate friends. He had already shown the 
cloven foot by attacking the financial credit of 
the government; and the question was, what 
would he do next? He had found the club an 
obstacle to his further advancement in politics, 
and when in the autumn campaign Wendell 
Phillips made a series of attacks on the charac- 
ter of the club, and especially on Bird himself, 
the hand of Butler was immediately recognized 
in it, and his plans for the future were easily 
calculated. It is probable that Phillips sup- 
posed he was doing the public a service in this, 
but the methods he pursued were not much to 
his credit. Phillips learned that the president 
of the Hartford and Erie Eailroad had recently 
given Mr. Bird an Alderney bull-calf, and as he 
could not find anything else against Bird's 
character he made the most of this. He spoke 
of it as of the nature of a legislative bribe, and 
in an oration delivered in the Boston Music 
Hall he called it ^ ' a thousand dollars in blood. ' ' 

12 



178 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

^^Who," he asked of liis audience, '^ would think 
of exchanging a bird for a bull?" 

This was unfortunate for the calf, which lost 
its life in consequence; but it was not worth 
more than ten dollars, and the contrast between 
the respective reputations of General Butler 
and Mr. Bird made Wendell Phillips appear in 
rather a ridiculous light. 

The following year, 1871, as the Bird Club ex- 
pected. General Butler made a strong fight for 
the gubernatorial nomination, and the club op- 
posed him in a solid body. Sanborn at this 
time was editing the Springfield Republican, 
and he exposed Butler's past political course 
in an unsparing manner. Butler made speeches 
in all the cities and larger towns of the State, 
and when he came to Springfield he singled out 
Sanborn, whom he recognized in the audience, 
for a direct personal attack. Sanborn rose to 
reply to him, and the contrast between the two 
men was like that between Lincoln and Doug- 
las; Sanborn six feet four inches in height, 
and Butler much shorter, but very thick-set. 
The altercation became a warm one, and Butler 
must have been very angry, for he grew red in 
the face and danced about the platform as if the 
boards were hot under his feet. The audience 
greeted both speakers with applause and hisses. 

It was a decided advantage for General But- 
ler that there were three other candidates in the 



FRANK W. BIRD 179 

field; but both Sumner and Wilson brought 
their influence to bear against him, and this, 
with Sanborn's telling editorials, would seem 
to have decided his defeat; for when the final 
struggle came at the Worcester Convention the 
vote was a very close one and a small matter 
might have changed it in his favor. 

The difference between Sumner and the ad- 
ministration, in 1872, on the San Domingo ques- 
tion accomplished what Phillips and Butler 
were unable to effect. Frank Bird and Sum- 
ner's more independent friends left the club, 
which was then dining at Young's Hotel, and 
seceded to the Parker House, where Sumner 
joined them not long afterwards. Senator Wil- 
son and the more deep-rooted Eepublicans 
formed a new organization called the Massachu- 
setts Club, which still existed in the year 1900. 

The great days of the Bird Club were over. 
With the death of Sumner, in 1874, its political 
importance came to an end, and although its 
members continued to meet for ^ve or six years 
longer, it ceased to attract public attention. 

At the age of eighty Frank W. Bird still di- 
rected the financial affairs of his paper busi- 
ness, but he looked back on his life as a 
** wretched failure." No matter how much he 
accomplished, it seemed to him as nothing com- 
pared with what he had wished to do. Would 
there were more such failures ! 



SUMNEE. 

Chakles Pinckney Sumnek, the father of 
Charles Sumner, was a man of an essentially 
veracious nature. He was high sheriff of Suf- 
folk County, Massachusetts, and when there was 
a criminal to be executed he always performed 
the office himself. Once when some one inquired 
why he did not delegate such a disagreeable task 
to one of his deputies, he is said to have replied, 
^'Simply because it is disagreeable.'' It was 
this elevated sense of moral responsibility 
which formed the keynote of his son's character. 

Charles Sumner's mother was Miss Belief 
Jacobs, a name in which we distinguish at once 
a mixture of the Hebrew and the Puritan. She 
belonged in fact to a Christianized Jewish fam- 
ily, but how long since her ancestors became 
Christianized remains in doubt. Yet it is easy 
to recognize the Hebrew element in Sumner's 
nature; the inflexibility of purpose, the abso- 
lute self-devotion, and even the prophetic fore- 
cast. Sumner was an old Hebrew prophet in 
the guise of an American statesman. True to 
his mother 's name, he was at once a Puritan and 
an Israelite in whom there was no guile ; for he 
was wholly exempt from covetousness and other 
meaner qualities of the Hebrew nature. In such 

180 



SUMNER 181 

respects Jews and Yankees are much alike. 
Either they are generous and high-minded, or 
they are not. 

Charles was rather a peculiar boy, as great 
men are apt to be in their youth. He cared lit- 
tle for boyish games, and still less for the bright 
eyes of the girls. He had remarkably long arms 
and legs, which were too often in the way of his 
comrades, and from which he derived the nick- 
name at the Latin-School of ' ' gawky Sumner ' ' ; 
and it may be well to notice here that there is 
no better sign for future superiority than for a 
lad to be ridiculed in this manner; while the 
wags who invent such sobriquets usually come 
to no good end.* There is sufficient evidence, 
however, that Sumner was well liked both at 
school and at college. 

He had his revenge on declamation day, for 
whereas others stumbled through their pieces, 
he seemed perfectly at home on the platform; 
his awkwardness disappeared and his perform- 
ance gave plain indications of the future ora- 
tor. Wendell Phillips was in the class after 
him, and they both were excellent speakers. 

Sumner's early life was not like that of Lin- 
coln, neither was he obliged to split rails for a 
living ; but it was a life of good stoical training 
nevertheless. Sheriff Sumner had eight chil- 

* More than one such has died the death of an inebriate. 



182 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

dren living at one time, and with the natural de- 
sire to give them as good an education as his 
own, he could not afford to spend much on ex- 
ternal elegances. It was not until Charles had 
become a distinguished lawyer that his mother 
dispensed with the iron forks and spoons on 
her dinner table; and this gives a fair idea 
of their domestic economy. We learn from 
Pierce's biography that his college expenses 
did not exceed two hundred dollars a year ; and 
this included everything. 

He entered at Harvard in the class of 1830; 
a year after Doctor Holmes and a year before 
Wendell Phillips. Much more is known con- 
cerning his college life than that of other dis- 
tinguished men of that time, and it is highly 
interesting to recognize the mature man fore- 
shadowed in the youth of eighteen. He was a 
good scholar in everything but mathematics; 
yet, at the same time, he cared little for rank. 
He was an enthusiastic reader, and sometimes 
neglected his studies for a book in which he was 
more deeply interested. He also liked to con- 
verse about the books he read, and in this way 
acquired a reputation for loquacity which never 
left him as long as he lived. It was sometimes 
troublesome to his friends, but it was of great 
advantage to him as a pubUc speaker. He lived 
a quiet, sober, industrious life in college, attract- 
ing comparatively little attention from either 



SUMNER 183 

his instructors or his fellow students. Yet, he 
showed the independence of his character by at- 
tending a cattle-show at Brighton, a proceed- 
ing for which he would have been suspended if 
it had been discovered by the college faculty. 
There were many foolish, monkish restrictions 
at Harvard in those days, and among them it 
was not considered decorous for a student to 
wear a colored vest. He might wear a white 
vest, but not a buff or a figured one. Sumner 
preferred a buff vest, and insisted on wearing 
it. When he was reprimanded for doing so he 
defended his course vigorously, and exposed the 
absurdity of the regulation in such plain terms 
that the faculty concluded to let him alone for 
the future.* He was exceedingly fond of the 
Greek and Latin authors, and quoted from them 
in his letters at this time, as he did afterwards 
in his speeches. His college course was not a 
brilliant one like Everett's and Phillips's, but 
seems to have been based on a more solid 
ground-work. 

It was in the Law-School that Sumner first 
distinguished himself. Judge Story, who had 
left the United States Supreme Bench to be- 
come a Harvard professor, was the chief lumi- 
nary of the school and the finest instructor in 

* In 1860 he still continued to wear a buff vest in sum- 
mer weather. 



184 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

law of his time. He soon discovered in Sumner 
a pupil after his own heart, and in spite of the 
disparity of their ages they became intimate 
friends. This is the more significant because 
Phillips was also in the same class, and the 
more brilliant scholar of the two; but Judge 
Story soon discovered that Phillips was study- 
ing as a means to an end, while Sumner's in- 
terest in the law was like that of a great artist 
who works from the pure love of his subject. 

William W. Story, who was a boy at this 
time, records the fact that Sumner was always 
pleasant and kind to children. 

At the age of twenty-four Charles Sumner 
was himself appointed an instructor at the Law- 
School ; and during the two following years he 
edited the reports of Judge Story's decisions in 
the United States Circuit Courts. 

It is evident from James Eussell Lowell's 
^^ Fable for Critics" that the personalities of 
his contemporaries troubled him : he could not 
see over their heads. In 1837 Sumner went to 
Europe and we find from his letters to Judge 
Story, George S. Hillard, and others, that he 
had already obtained a vantage ground from 
which the civilized world lay before him, as all 
New England does from the top of Mount 
Washington. He goes into a French law court, 
and analyzes the procedure of French justice 
in a letter which has the value of an historical 



SUMNER 185 

document. He noticed that Napoleon was still 
spoken of as VEmpereur, although there was a 
king in France, — a fact pregnant with future 
consequences. He remained in Paris until he 
was a complete master of the French language, 
and attended one hundred and fifty lectures at 
the university and elsewhere. He enjoyed the 
grand opera and the acting in French theatres ; 
nor did he neglect to study Italian art. He was 
making a whole man of himself ; and it seemed 
as if an unconscious instinct was guiding him 
to his destiny. 

Fortunate was the old Sheriff to have such a 
son ; but Charles Sumner was also fortunate to 
have had a father who was willing to save and 
economize for his benefit. Otherwise he might 
have been a sheriff himself. 

Judge Story's letters of introduction opened 
the doors wide to him in England. In the 
course of ten months he became acquainted with 
almost every distinguished person in the United 
Kingdom. He never asked for introductions, 
and he never presented himself without one. He 
was handed from one mansion to another all the 
way from London to the Scotch Highlands. 
Only twenty-seven years of age, he was treated 
on an equality by men ten to fifteen years his 
senior; and he proved himself equal to their 
expectations. No American except Lowell has 
ever made such a favorable impression in Eng- 



186 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

land as Sumner; but this happened in Sum- 
ner's youth, while Lowell in his earlier visits 
attracted little attention. 

It is perfectly true that if he had been the 
son of an English sheriff this would not have 
happened; but he encountered the same obsta- 
cles in Boston society that he would have done 
under similar conditions in Great Britain. The 
doors of Wentworth House and Strachan Park 
were open to him, but those of Beacon Street 
were closed, — and perhaps it was better for him 
on the whole that they were. 

Sumner's letters from Europe are at least as 
interesting as those written by any other Ameri- 
can. Such breadth of vision is not often united 
with clearness and accuracy of detail. All his 
letters ought to be published in a volume by 
themselves. Sumner returned to America the 
following year and settled himself quietly and 
soberly to his work as a lawyer. He was not a 
success, however, as a practitioner in the courts, 
unless he could plead before a bench of judges. 
In the Common Pleas an ordinary pettifogger 
would often take a case away from him. He 
could not, if he would, have practised those se- 
ductive arts by which Eufus Choate drew the 
jury into his net, in spite of their deliberate in- 
tentions to the contrary. Yet, Sumner 's reputa- 
tion steadily improved, so that when Longfellow 
came to live in Cambridge he found Sumner 



SUMNER 187 

delivering lectures at the Harvard Law-School, 
where he might have remained the rest of his 
life, if he had been satisfied with a merely rou- 
tine employment, and the fortunes of the repub- 
lic had not decided differently. 

The attraction between Sumner and Longfel- 
low was immediate and permanent. It was 
owing more perhaps to the essential purity of 
their natures, than to mutual sympathy in re- 
gard to art and literature; although Longfel- 
low held Sumner's literary judgment in such 
respect that he rarely published a new poem 
without first subjecting his work to Sumner's 
criticism. 

Those who admired Sumner at this time, for 
his fine moral and intellectual qualities, had no 
adequate conception of the far nobler quality 
which lay concealed in the depths of his nature. 
Charles Sumner was a hero, — one to whom life 
was nothing in comparison with his duty. 

It was in the anti-Irish riot of June, 1837, 
that he first gave evidence of this. Nothing was 
more hateful to him than race prejudice, and 
what might be called international malignity, 
which he believed was the most frequent cause 
of war. 

As soon as Sumner was notified of the dis- 
turbance, he hastened to the scene of action, 
seized on a prominent position, and attempted 
to address the insurgents ; but his pacific words 



188 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

only excited them to greater fury. They 
charged on him and his little group of support- 
ers, knocked him down and trampled on him. 
Dr. S. G. Howe, who stood near by, a born 
fighter, protected Sumner's prostrate body, and 
finally carried him to a place of safety, although 
twice his own size. Sumner took his mishap 
very coolly, and, as soon as he could talk freely, 
addressed his friends on the evils resulting 
from race prejudice. 

This incident may have led Sumner to the 
choice of a subject for his Fourth of July ora- 
tion in 1845. The title of this address was 
*^The True Grandeur of Nations,'' but its real 
object was one which Sumner always had at 
heart, and never relinquished the hope of, — 
namely, the establishment of an international 
tribunal, which should possess jurisdiction over 
the differences and quarrels between nations, 
and so bring warfare forever to an end. The 
plan is an impracticable one, because the decis- 
ions of a court only have validity if it is able to 
enforce them, and how could the decisions of an 
international tribunal have value in case the 
parties concerned declined to accept them? It 
would only result in waging war in order to pre- 
vent war. Yet, of all the Fourth of July ora- 
tions that were delivered in the nineteenth cen- 
tury, Sumner's and Webster's are the only two 
that have survived; and the ^^True Grandeur 



SUMNER 189 

of Nations ' ' has recently been published by the 
London Peace Society as an argument in favor 
of their philanthropic movement. 

Sumner was now in the prune of manhood, 
and a rarely handsome man. He had an heroic 
figure, six feet two inches in height, and well 
proportioned in all respects. His features, too 
large and heavy in his youth, had become strong 
and regular, and although he had not acquired 
that leonine look of reserved power with which 
he confronted the United States Senate, his ex- 
pression was frank and fearless. As L. Maria 
Child, who heard him frequently, said, he seemed 
to be as much in his place on the platform as a 
statue on its pedestal. His gestures had not the 
natural grace of Phillips's or the more studied 
elegance of Everett, but he atoned for these de- 
ficencies by the manly earnestness of his deliv- 
ery. He made an impression on the highly cul- 
tivated men and women who composed his 
audience which they always remembered. 

The question has often been raised by the 
older abolitionists, Why did not Sumner take 
an earlier interest in the anti-slavery struggle I 
The answer is twofold. That he did not join 
the Free-soilers in 1844 was most probably 
owing to the influence of Judge Story, who had 
already marked Sumner out for the Supreme 
Bench, and wished him to concentrate his ener- 
gies in that direction. His friends, too, at this 



190 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

time — Hillard, Felton, Liebe, and even Long- 
fellow — were either opposed to introducing the 
slavery question into politics or practically in- 
different to it. 

On the other hand, Sumner never could agree 
with Garrison's position on this question. He 
held the Constitution in too great respect to 
admit that it was an agreement with death and 
a government with the devil. He believed that 
the founders of the Constitution were opposed 
to slavery, and that the expression, ^^ persons 
held to labor, ' ' was good evidence of this. One 
of his finest orations in the Senate was intended 
to prove this point. Furthermore he perceived 
the futility of Garrison's idea — and this was 
afterwards disproved by the war — that if it 
were not for the National Government the 
slaves would rise in rebellion and so obtain their 
freedom. He always asserted that slavery 
would be abolished under the Constitution or 
not at all. Like Abraham Lincoln he waited for 
his time to come. 

Charles Sumner was the reply that Massa- 
chusetts made to the Fugitive Slave Law, and a 
telling reply it was. Unlike his legal contem- 
poraries he recognized the law as a revolution- 
ary act which, unless it was successfully op- 
posed, would strike a death-blow at American 
freedom. He saw that it could only be met by 
counter-revolution, and he prepared his mind 



SUMNER 191 

for the consequences. It was only at sncli a 
time that so uncompromising a statesman as 
Sumner could have entered into political life; 
for the possibility of compromise had passed 
away with the suspension of the writ of habeas 
corpus, and Sumner's policy of *'no compro- 
mise'' was the one which brought the slavery 
question to a successful issue. For fifteen years 
in Congress he held to that policy as faithfully 
as a planet to its course, and those who differed 
with him were left in the rear. 

Sumner's first difference was with his con- 
servative friends, and especially with his law- 
partner, George S. Hillard, a brilliant man in 
his way, and for an introductory address with- 
out a rival in Boston. Hillard was at heart as 
anti-slavery as Sumner, and his wife had even 
assisted fugitive slaves, but he was swathed in 
the bands of fashionable society, and he lacked 
the courage to break loose from them. He ad- 
hered to the Whigs and was relegated to pri- 
vate life. They parted without acrimony, and 
Sumner never failed to do his former friend a 
service when he found an opportunity. 

His difference with Felton was of a more 
serious kind. Emerson, perhaps, judged Fel- 
ton too severely, — a man of ardent tempera- 
ment who was always in danger of saying more 
than he intended. 

Sumner's election to the Senate was a chance 



192 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

in ten tlionsand. It is well known that at first 
he declined to be a candidate. He did not think 
he was fitted for the position, and when Caleb 
Cnshing urged him to court the favor of for- 
tune he said: '^I will not leave my chair to 
become United States Senator." Whatever 
vanity there might be in the man, he was en- 
tirely free from the ambition for power and 
place. 

There were several prominent public men at 
the time who would have given all they owned 
for the position, but they were set aside for the 
man who did not want it, — the bold jurist who 
dared to set himself against the veteran states- 
men of his country. It reads like a Bible-tale, 
or the story of Cincinnatus taken from his plow 
to become dictator. 

The gates of his alma mater were now closed 
to Sumner, not only during his life but even 
long after that. Such is the fate of revolu- 
tionary characters, that they tear asunder old 
and familiar bonds in order to contract new ties. 
In Washington he found a broader and more 
vigorous life, if less cultivated, and the Free- 
soil leaders with whom he now came in contact 
in his own State were much more akin to his 
own nature than Story, and Felton, and Hil- 
lard. Sumner was never popular in Washing- 
ton, as he had been among the English liberals 
and Cambridge men of letters ; but he was re- 



SUMNER 193 

spected on all sides for his fearlessness, his 
ability, and the veracity of his statements. His 
previous life now proved a great advantage to 
him in most respects, but he had become accus- 
tomed to dealing and conversing with a certain 
class of men, and this made it difficult for him 
to assimilate himself to a wholly different class. 
Sumner's ardent temperament required con- 
stant self-control in this new and trying posi- 
tion ; and a man who continually reflects before- 
hand on his own actions acquires an appearance 
of greater reserve than a person of really cold 
nature. 

Seward had thus far been the leader of the 
Free-soil and Republican parties, not only be- 
fore the country at large but in the Senate. 
It was soon found, however, that Sumner was 
not only a more effective speaker, but possessed 
greater resources for debate. Judge Story had 
noticed long before that facts were so carefully 
and systematically arranged in Sumner's mind 
that whatever spring was touched he could al- 
ways respond to the subject with a full and 
exact statement. He was like a librarian who 
could lay his hand on the book he wanted with- 
out having to look for it in the catalogue, — and 
this upon a scale which seems almost incredible. 
Webster possessed the same faculty, but united 
it with a sense of artistic beauty which Sumner 
could not equal. 

13 



194 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

Sumner, however, was the best orator in Con- 
gress at this time, as well as the best legal au- 
thority. On all constitutional questions it was 
felt that he had Judge Story's support behind 
him. His oration on ^^ Freedom National, 
Slavery Sectional, '' was a revelation, not only 
to the oi3position, but to his own party. From 
that time forth, he became the spokesman of his 
party on all the more important questions. 

It frequently happens that the essential char- 
acter of a government changes while its form 
remains the same. In 1801 France was nom- 
inally a Republic, but its administration was 
Imperial. In 1853 the United States ceased to 
be a democracy and became an oligarchy, gov- 
erned by thirty thousand slave-holders, — until 
the people reconquered their rights on the field 
of battle. Accustomed to despotic power in 
their own States for more than two generations, 
and justifying themselves always by divine 
right, the slave-holders possessed all the self- 
confidence, pretension, and arrogance of the 
old French nobility. They were a self-deluded 
class of men, of all classes the most difficult to 
deal with, and Sumner was the Mirabeau who 
faced them at Washington and who pricked the 
bubble of their Olympian pretensions by a most 
pitiless exposure of their true character. 

Those men had come to believe that the 
ownership of slaves was equivalent to a patent 



SUMNER 195 

of nobility, and they were encouraged in this 
monarchical illusion by the nobility of Europe. 
In Disraeli's ''Lothair'' an English duke is made 
to say: ^^I consider an American with large 
estates in the South a genuine aristocrat. ' ' The 
pretension was ridiculous, and the only way to 
combat it was to make it appear so. Sumner 
characterized Butler, of South Carolina, and 
Douglas, of Illinois, who was their northern 
man of business, as the Don Quixote and Sancho 
Panza of an antiquated cause. The satire hit 
its mark only too exactly; and two days later 
Sumner was assaulted for it in an assassin-like 
manner, — struck on the head from behind while 
writing at his desk, and left senseless on the 
floor. Sumner was considered too low in the 
social scale for the customary challenge to a 
duel, and there was no court in Washington that 
would take cognizance of the outrage. 

The following day, when Wilson made the 
most eloquent speech of his life in an indignant 
rebuke to Butler and Brooks, Butler started 
from his seat to attack him, but was held back 
by his friends. They might as well have allowed 
him to go, for Wilson was a man of enormous 
strength and could easily have handled any 
Southerner upon the floor. 

In ^^The Crime against Kansas'' there are 
two or three sentences which Sumner after- 
wards expunged, and this shows that he regret- 



196 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

ted having said tliem ; but it is the greatest of 
his orations, and Webster's reply to Hayne is 
the only Congressional address with which it 
can be compared. One is in fact the sequence 
of the other ; Webster 's is the flower, and Sum- 
ner 's the fruit; the former directed against 
the active principle of sedition, and the latter 
against its consequences; and both were di- 
rected against South Carolina, where the war 
originated. Sumner's speech has not the finely 
sculptured character of Webster's, but its archi- 
tectural structure is grand and impressive. 
His Baconian division of the various excuses 
that were made for the Kansas outrages into 
**the apology tyrannical, the apology imheciley 
the apolog}^ absurd, and the apology infamous/' 
was original and pertinent. 

Preston S. Brooks only lived about six 
months after his assault on Sumner, and some 
of the abolitionists thought he died of a guilty 
conscience. Both in feature and expression he 
bore a decided likeness to J. Wilkes Booth, the 
assassin of President Lincoln. It might have 
proved the death of Sumner, but for the devo- 
tion of his Boston physician, Dr. Marshall S. 
Perry, who went to him without waiting to be 
telegraphed for. It was also fortunate for him 
that his brother George, a very intelligent man, 
happened to be in America instead of Europe, 
where he lived the greater part of his life. 



SUMNER 197 

The assault on Sumner strengthened the Re- 
publican party, and secured his re-election to 
the Senate ; but it produced nervous irritation 
of the brain and spinal cord, a disorder which 
can only be cured under favorable conditions, 
and even then is likely to return if the patient is 
exposed to a severe mental strain. Sumner's 
cure by Dr. Brown-Sequard was considered a 
remarkable one, and has a place in the history 
of medicine. The effect of bromide and ergot 
was then unknown, and the doctor made such 
good use of his cauterizing-iron that on one 
occasion, at least, Sumner declared that he 
could not endure it any longer. Neither could 
he tell positively whether it was this treatment 
or the baths which he afterwards took at Aix- 
les-Bains that finally cured him. His own calm 
temperament and firmness of mind may have 
contributed to this as much as Dr. Brown- 
Sequard. 

When Sumner returned to Boston, early in 
1860, all his friends went to Dr. S. G. Howe to 
know if he was really cured, and Howe said: 
'^ He is a well man, but he will never be able to 
make another two hours ' speech. ' ' Yet Sumner 
trained himself and tested his strength so care- 
fully that in the following spring he delivered 
his oration on the barbarism of slavery, more 
than an hour in length, before the Senate ; and 
in 1863 he made a speech three hours in length, 



198 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

a herculean effort that has never been equalled, 
except by Hamilton's address before the Con- 
stitutional Convention of 1787. 

I remember Sumner in the summer of 1860 
walking under my father's grape trellis, when 
the vines were in blossom, with his arms above 
his head, and saying: '^This is like the south 
of France." To think of Europe, its art, his- 
tory, and scenery, was his relaxation from the 
cares and excitement of politics ; but there were 
many who did not understand this, and looked 
upon it as an affectation. Sumner in his least 
serious moments was often self-conscious, but 
never affected. He talked of himself as an inno- 
cent child talks. On all occasions he was thor- 
oughly real and sincere, and he would some- 
times be as much abashed by a genuine compli- 
ment as a maiden of seventeen. 

At the same time Sumner was so great a man 
that it was simply impossible to disguise it, 
and he made no attempt to do this. The prin- 
ciple that all men are created equal did not 
apply in his case. To realize this it was only 
necessary to see him and Senator Wilson to- 
gether. Wilson was also a man of exceptional 
ability, and yet a stranger, who did not know 
him by sight, might have conversed with him 
on a railway train without suspecting that he 
was a member of the United States Senate; 
but this could not have happened in Sumner's 



SUMNER 199 

case. Every one stared at him as he walked 
the streets; and he could not help becoming 
conscious of this. That there were moments 
when he seemed to reflect with satisfaction on 
his past life his best friends could not deny ; but 
the vanity that is born of a frivolous spirit was 
not in him. He was more like a Homeric hero 
than a Sir Philip Sidney, and considering the 
work he had to do it was better on the whole 
that he should be so. 

He carried the impracticable theory of social 
equality to an extent beyond that of most Amer- 
icans, and yet he was frequently complained 
of for his reserve and aristocratic manners. 
The range of his acquaintance was the widest 
of any man of his time. It extended from Lord 
Brougham to J. B. Smith, the mulatto caterer 
of Boston, who, like many of his race, was a 
person of gentlemanly deportment, and was 
always treated by Sumner as a valued friend. 
As the champion of the colored race in the Sen- 
ate this was diplomatically necessary; but to 
the rank and file of his own party he was less 
gracious. He had not grown up among them, 
but had entered politics at the top, so that even 
their faces were unfamiliar to him. The repre- 
sentatives of Massachusetts, who voted for him 
at the State House, were sometimes chagrined 
at the coldness of his recognition, — a coldness 
that did not arise from lack of sympathy, but 



200 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

from ignorance of the individual. Before Sum- 
ner could treat a stranger in a friendly manner, 
lie wished to know what sort of a person he had 
to deal with. There is a kind of insincerity in 
universal cordiality, — like that of the candidate 
who is seeking to obtain votes. 

A recent writer, who complains of Sumner's 
lack of graciousness, would do well to ask his 
conscience what the reason for it was. If he 
will drop the three last letters of his own name 
the solution will be apparent to him. 

The more Sumner became absorbed in public 
affairs the less he seemed to be suited to gen- 
eral society, — or general society to him. He 
was always ready to talk on those subjects that 
interested him, but in general conversation, in 
the pleasant give-and-take of wit and anecdote, 
he did not feel so much at home as he had in his 
Cambridge days. His thoughts were too seri- 
ous, and the tendency of his mind was argu- 
mentative. 

Every man is to a certain extent the victim 
of his occupation; and the formalities of the 
Senate were ever tightening their grasp on 
Sumner's mode of life. One afternoon, as he 
was leaving Dr. Howe's garden at South Bos- 
ton, the doctor's j^oungest daughter ran out 
from the house, and called to him, '^ Good-bye, 
Mr. Sumner." His back was already turned, 
but he faced about like an officer on parade, and 



SUMNER 201 

said with formal gravity: ^^Good evening, 
child/' so that Mrs. Howe could not avoid 
laughing at him. Yet Sumner was fond of chil- 
dren in his youth. L. Maria Child heard of this 
incident and made good use of it in one of her 
story-books. 

The grand fact in Sumner's character, how- 
ever, rests beyond dispute that he never aspired 
to the Presidency. That lingering Washington 
malady which victimized Clay, Webster, Cal- 
houn, Seward, Chase, Sherman, and Blaine, and 
made them appear almost like sinners in tor- 
ment, never attacked Sumner. He had accepted 
office as a patriotic duty, and, like Washington, 
he was ready to resign it whenever his work 
would be done. 

Sumner 's speech on the barbarism of slavery, 
timed as it was to meet the Baltimore conven- 
tion, was evidently intended to drive a wedge 
into the split between the Northern and South- 
ern Democrats, but it also must have encour- 
aged the secession movement. Sumner, how- 
ever, can hardly be blamed for this, after the 
indignity he had suffered. That a high member 
of the Government could have been assaulted 
with impunity in open day indicated a condition 
of affairs in the United States not unlike that 
of France at the time when Count Tollendal was 
judicially murdered by Louis XV. Washing- 
ton City was an oligarchical despotism. 



202 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

A dark cloud hung over the Kepublic during 
the winter of 1860- '61. The impending dan- 
ger was that war would break out before Lin- 
coln could be inaugurated. Such secrecy was 
observed by the Republican leaders that even 
Horace Greeley could not fathom their inten- 
tions. Late in December John A. Andrew and 
George L. Stearns went to Washington to sur- 
vey the ground for themselves, and the latter 
wrote to William Robinson, ^^The watchword 
is, keep quiet.'' ^ He probably obtained this 
from Sumner, and it gives the key to the whole 
situation. 

It demolishes Von Hoist's finely-spun melo- 
dramatic theory in regard to that period of our 
history, in which he finally compares the condi- 
tion of the United States to a drowning man 
who sees lurid flames before his eyes. In the 
Republican and Union parties there were all 
shades of compromise sentiment, — from those 
who were ready to sacrifice anything in order to 
prevent secession, to Abraham Lincoln, who 
was only willing to surrender the barren and 
unpopulated State of New Mexico to the slave- 
holders.* But Sumner, Wade, Trumbull, Wil- 
son, and King stood together like a rocky coast 
against which the successive waves of compro- 
mise dashed without effect. Von Hoist was noti- 

* A not unreasonable proposition. 



SUMNER 203 

fied of this fact years before the last volume of 
his history was published, but he disregarded 
it evidently because it interfered with his fa- 
vorite theory. 

The last of January, however, a report was 
circulated in Boston that Sumner had joined 
the compromisers for the sake of consistency 
with the peace principles which he had advo- 
cated in his Fourth of July oration. Boston 
newspapers made the most of this, although it 
did not seem likely to Sumner's friends, and 
George L. Stearns finally wrote to him for per- 
mission to make a denial of it. Sumner first 
replied to him by telegraph saying: ^'I am 
against sending commissioners to treat of sur- 
render by the North. Stand firm." Then he 
wrote him this memorable letter. 

Washington^ 3d Feb., '61. 
My dear Sir: 

There are but few who stand rooted, like the 
oak, against a storm. This is the nature of 
man. Let us be patient. 

My special trust is this: No possible com- 
promise or concession will he of the least avail. 
Events are hastening which will supersede all 
such things. This will save us. But I like to 
see Mass. in this breaking up of the Union ever 
true. God keep her from playing the part of 
Judas or — of Peter! You may all bend or cry 



204 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

pardon — I will not. Here I am, and I mean to ^ 
stand firm to the last. God bless you ! 

Ever yours, 

Chables Sumneb. 

The handwriting of this letter is magnificent. 
Sumner had a strongly characteristic hand with 
something of artistic grace in it, too; but in 
this instance his writing seems like the external 
expression of the mood he was in when he wrote 
the letter. 

The question may be asked. Why then did not 
Sumner rise in the Senate and make one of his 
telling speeches against compromise during that 
long, wearisome session? I think the answer 
will be found in the watchword : ^ ^ Keep quiet ! ' ' 
He perfectly understood the game that Seward 
was playing and he was too wise to interfere 
with it. Seward was the cat and compromise 
was the mouse. Whatever mistakes he may 
have afterwards made, Seward at this time 
showed a master hand. He encouraged com- 
promise, but he must have been aware that the 
proposed constitutional amendment, which 
would forever have prevented legislation 
against slavery, would not have been confirmed 
by the Northern States. He could easily count 
the legislatures that would reject it. It finally 
passed through Congress on the last night of 



SUMNER 205 

this session by a single vote, and was ratified 
by only three States ! 

As soon as Lincoln was inaugurated there 
was no more talk of compromise, and Seward 
was firmness itself. He declined to receive the 
disunion commissioners ; * he compelled the 
Secretary of War to reinforce Fort Pickens; 
he overhauled General Scott, who proved an 
impediment to vigorous military operations. 
These facts tell their own tale. 

After Seward and Chase had left the Senate 
Sumner was facile princeps. Trumbull was a 
vigorous orator and a rough-rider in debate, but 
he did not possess the store of legal knowledge 
and the vast fund of general information which 
Sumner could draw from. One has to read the 
fourth volume of Pierce's biography to realize 
the dimensions of Sumner's work during the 
period from 1861 to 1869. Military affairs he 
never interfered with, but he was Chairman of 
the Committee on Foreign Affairs, the most im- 
portant in the Senate, and in the direction of 
home politics he was second to none. No other 
voice was heard so often in the legislative halls 
at "Washington, and none heard with more re- 
spect. A list of the bills that he introduced and 
carried through would fill a long column. 

The test of statesmanship is to change from 

* At the same time he coquetted with them unofficially. 



206 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

the opposition to the leadership in a Govern- 
ment, — from critical to constructive politics. 
Carl Schnrz was a fine orator and an effective 
speaker on the minority side, but he commenced 
life as a revolutionist and always remained one. 
If he had once attempted to introduce legisla- 
tion, he would have shown his weakness, exactly 
where Sumner proved his strength. Froude 
says that to be great in politics ^ ^ is to recognize 
a popular movement, and to have the courage 
and address to lead if; but three times Sum- 
ner planted his standard away in advance of his 
party, and stood by it alone until his followers 
came up to him. 

He was always in advance of his party, but 
conspicuously so in regard to the abolition of j 
slavery, the exposure of Andrew Johnson's per- | 
fidy, and the reconstruction of the rebellious 
States. "We might add the annexation of San 
Domingo as a fourth; for I believe there are 
few thinking persons at present who do not feel 
grateful to him for having saved the country 
from that uncomfortable acquisition. 

The bill to abolish slavery in the District of f 
Columbia was introduced by Wilson. Sumner 
did not like to be always proposing anti-slavery 
measures himself, and he wished Wilson to have 
the honor of it. Wilson would not, of course, 
have introduced the measure without consulting 
his colleague. 



SUMNER 207 

Lincoln evidently desired to enjoy the sole 
honor of issuing the Emancipation Proclama- 
tion of 1862, and he deserved to have it; but 
Sumner thought it might safely have been done 
after the battles of Fort Donaldson and Shiloh, 
and the victories of Foote and Farragut on the 
Mississippi, six months before it was issued; 
and he urged to have it done at that time. 
Whether his judgment was correct in this, it is 
impossible to decide. 

Early in July, 1862, he introduced a bill in 
the Senate for the organization of the ^ ^ contra- 
bands '^ and other negroes into regiments, — a 
policy suggested by Hamilton in 1780, — and no 
one can read President Lincoln's Message to 
Congress in December, 1864, without recogniz- 
ing that it was only with the assistance of negro 
troops that the Union was finally preserved. 

In spite of the continued differences between 
Sumner and Seward on American questions 
they worked together like one man in regard to 
foreign politics. Sumner's experience in Eu- 
rope and his knowledge of public men there was 
much more extensive than Seward's, and in this 
line he was of invaluable assistance to the Sec- 
retary of State. 

Lowell could make a holiday of six years at 
the Court of St. James, but during the war it 
was a serious matter to be Minister to England. 
In the summer of 1863 affairs there had reached 



208 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

a climax. The Alabama and Florida were scar- 
ing all American ships from the ocean, and five 
ironclad rams, built for the confederate govern- 
ment, were nearly ready to put to sea from Eng- 
lish ports. If this should happen it seemed 
likely that they would succeed in raising the 
blockade. As a final resort Lincoln and Seward 
sent word to Adams to threaten the British 
Government with war unless the rams were de- 
tained. 

Meanwhile it was necessary to brace up the 
American people to meet the possible emer- 
gency. On September 10 Sumner addressed an 
audience of three thousand persons in Cooper 
Institute, New York, for three hours on the for- 
eign relations of the United States ; and there 
were few who left the hall before it was finished. 
He arraigned the British Government for its 
inconsistency, its violation of international law, 
and its disregard of the rights of navigators. 
It was not only a heroic effort, but a self-sacri- 
ficing one ; for Sunmer knew that it would sep- 
arate him forever from the larger number of his 
English friends. 

At the same time Minister Adams had an 
equally difficult task before him. War with 
England seemed to be imminent. He held a 
long consultation with Benjamin Moran, the 
Secretary of Legation, and they finally con- 
cluded to see if an opinion could be obtained 



SUMNER 209 

on the confederate rams from an English legal 
authority. They went to Sir Robert Colyer, one 
of the lords of the admiralty, and asked him if 
he was willing to give them an opinion. He 
replied that he considered the law above poli- 
tics, and that he wished to do what was right. 
After investigating the subject Colyer made a 
written statement to the effect that the United 
States was wholly justified in demanding de- 
tention of the rams. Adams then placed this 
opinion together with Lincoln's notification be- 
fore the British Cabinet, but the papers were 
returned to him with a refusal of compliance. 
''There is nothing now," said Adams to Moran, 
' ' but for us to pack up and go home ' ' ; but 
Moran replied, ''Let us wait a little; while 
there is life there is hope"; and the same 
evening Adams was notified that Her Majesty's 
Grovernment still had the subject under con- 
sideration. The rams proved a dead loss. 

When Benjamin Moran related this incident 
to the Philadelphia Hock Club after his return, 
he added: "We owe it to our Irish- American 
citizens as much as to the monitors that we did 
not suffer from English interference." 

Seward, and also Chase, wished to issue let- 
ters of reprisal to privateers to go in search of 
the Alabama, but Sumner opposed this in an 
able speech on the importance of maintaining 

a high standard of procedure for the good 

u 



210 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

reputation of the country; and he carried his 
point. 

Sumner's greatest parliamentary feat was 
occasioned by Trumbull's introduction of a bill 
for the reconstruction of Louisiana in the win- 
ter of 1864. There were only ten thousand loyal 
white voters in the State; and nothing could 
be more imprudent or prejudicial than such a 
hasty attempt at reorganization of the rebel- 
lious South, before the war was fairly ended. 
It was like a man building an annex to one side 
of his house while the other side was on fire; 
yet it was known to be supported by Seward, 
and, as was alleged, also by Lincoln. It was 
thrust upon Congress at the last moment, evi- 
dently in order to prevent an extended debate, 
and Sumner turned this to his own advantage. 
For two days and nights his voice resounded 
through the Senate chamber, until, with the as- 
sistance of his faithful allies. Wade and Wilson, 
he succeeded in preventing the bill from being 
brought to a vote. It was an extreme instance 
of human endurance, without parallel before or 
since, and may possibly have shortened Sum- 
ner's life. Five weeks later President Lincoln, 
in his last speech, made the significant proposi- 
tion of universal amnesty combined with uni- 
versal suffrage. Would that he could have lived 
to see the completion of his work ! 

Something may be said here of Sumner's in- 



SUMNER 211 

fluence with Mrs. Lincoln. If Don Piatt is to be 
trusted, Mrs. Lincoln came to Washington with 
a strong feeling of antipathy towards Seward 
and ^^ those eastern abolitionists." She was born 
in a slave state and had remained pro-slavery, 
— a fact which did not trouble her husband be- 
cause he did not allow it to trouble him. Fif- 
teen months in Washington brought a decided 
change in her opinions, and Sumner would seem 
to have been instrumental in this conversion. It 
is well known that she preferred his society to 
that of others. She had studied French some- 
what, and he encouraged her to talk it with him, 
— which was looked upon, of course, as an affec- 
tation on both sides. 

At the time of General McClellan's removal, 
October, 1862, Mrs. Lincoln was at the Parker 
House in Boston. Sumner called on her in the 
forenoon, and she said at once: *'I suppose 
you have heard the news, and that you are glad 
of it. So am I. Mr. Lincoln told me he expected 
to remove him before I left Washington." 

Sumner resembled Charles XII. of Sweden 
in this : there is no evidence that he ever was in 
love. His devotion to the law in early life, sur- 
rounded as he was by interesting friends, may 
have been antagonistic to matrimony. The 
woman he ought to have married was the noble 
daughter of his old friend, Cornelius Felton, 
whom he often met, but whose worth he never 



212 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

recognized. The marriage which he contracted 
late in life was not based on enduring princi- 
ples, and soon came to a grievous end. It was 
more like the marriages that princes make than 
a true republican courtship. Sumner appar- 
ently wanted a handsome wife to preside at his 
dinner parties in Washington, but he chose her 
from among his opponents instead of from 
among his friends. 

Since there has been much foolish talk upon 
this subject, it may be well to state here that the 
true difficulty between Mr. and Mrs. Sumner 
was owing to the company which he invited to 
his house. She only wished to entertain fash- 
ionable people, but a large proportion of Sum- 
ner's friends could not be included within these 
narrow limits. As Senator from Massachusetts 
that would not do for him at all. This is the 
explanation that was given by Mrs. Sumner's 
brother, and it is without doubt the correct one ; 
but women in such cases are apt to allege some- 
thing different from the true reason. 

Sumner's most signal triumph happened on 
the occasion of President Johnson's first Mes- 
sage to Congress in January, 1865. He rose 
from his seat and characterized it as a ^'white- 
washing document. ' ' That day he stood alone, 
yet within six weeks every Republican Senator 
was at his side. 

Sumner knew how to be silent as well as to 



SUMNER 213 

talk. On one occasion he was making a speech 
in the Senate when he suddenly heard Schuyler 
Colfax behind him saying, '^This is all very 
good, Sumner, but here I have the Appropria- 
tion bills from the House, and the Democrats 
know nothing about them." Sumner instantly 
resumed his seat, and the bills were acted on 
without serious opposition. He would some- 
times sit through a dinner at the Bird Club 
without saying very much, but if he once started 
on a subject that interested him there was no 
limit to it. 

Sumner's speech on the ^^ Alabama claims" 
was considered a failure because the adminis- 
tration did not afterwards support him ; and it 
is true that no government would submit to a 
demand for adventitious damages so long as it 
could prevent this; but it was a far-reaching 
exposure of an unprincipled foreign policy, and 
this speech formed the groundwork for the 
Treaty of Washington and the Geneva arbitra- 
tion. It was a more important case than the set- 
tlement of the Northeastern boundary. 

Sumner died the death of a hero. The admin- 
istration of General Grant might well be called 
the recoil of the cannon : it was the reactionary 
effect of a great military movement on civil af- 
fairs. Sumner alone withstood the shock of it, 
and he fought against it for four years like a 
veteran on his last line of defence, feeling vie- 



214 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

tory was no longer possible. Many of his 
friends found the current too strong for them; 
his own party deserted him ; even the Legisla- 
ture of his own State turned against him in a 
senseless and irrational manner. Still his spirit 
was unconquerable, and he continued to face the 
storm as long as life was in him. It was a 
magnificent spectacle. 

It was the last battlefield of a veteran war- 
rior, and although Sumner retired from it with 
a mortal wound, he had the satisfaction of win- 
ning a glorious victory. No end could have 
been more appropriate to such a life. Dulce et 
decorum est pro patria mori. 

Since Richard Coeur de Leon forgave Ber- 
tram de Gordon, who caused his death, there 
has never been a more magnanimous man than 
Charles Sumner. Once when L. Maria Child 
was anathematizing Preston S. Brooks in his 
presence, he said: ^'You should not blame 
him. It was slavery and not Brooks that struck 
me. If Brooks had been born and brought up 
in New England, he would no more have done 
the thing he did than Caleb Cushing would have 
done it," — Cushing always being his type of a 
pro-slavery Yankee. 

In 1871 Charles W. Slack, the editor of the 
Boston Commonwealth^ for whom Sumner had 
obtained a lucrative office, turned against his 
benefactor in order to save his position. When 



SUMNER 215 

I spoke of this to Sumner, he said: ^'Well, it 
is human nature. Slack is growing old, and if 
he keeps his office for the next six years, he will 
have a competency. I have no doubt he feels 
grateful to me, and regrets the course he is tak- 
ing. ' ^ At the same time, he spoke sadly. 

Sumner resembled Lord Chatham more 
closely than any statesman of the nineteenth 
century. He carried his measures through by 
pure force of argument and clearness of fore- 
sight. From 1854 to 1874 it was his policy that 
prevailed in the councils of the nation. He suc- 
ceeded where others failed. 

He defeated Franklin Pierce, Seward, Trum- 
bull, Andrew Johnson, Hamilton Fish, and even 
Lincoln, on the extradition of Mason and Slidell. 
He tied Johnson down, so that he could only 
move his tongue. 

In considering Sumner's oratory, we should 
bear in mind what Coleridge said to Allston, 
the painter, — ''never judge a work of art by 
its defects." His sentences have not the classic 
purity of Webster's, and his delivery lacked the 
ease and elegance of Phillips and Everett. His 
style was often too florid and his Latin quo- 
tations, though excellent in themselves, were 
not suited to the taste of his audiences. But 
Sumner was always strong and effective, and 
that is, after all, the main point. Like Webster 
he possessed a logical mind, and the profound 



216 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

earnestness of his nature gave an equally pro- 
found conviction to his words. Besides this, 
Sumner possessed the heroic element, as Pat- 
rick Henry and James Otis possessed it. After 
Webster's death there was no American 
speaker who could hold an audience like him. 

Matthew Arnold, in his better days, said that 
Burke's oratory was too rich and overloaded. 
This is true, but it is equally true that Burke is 
the only orator of the eighteenth century that 
still continues to be read. He had a faulty de- 
livery and an ungainly figure, but if he emptied 
the benches in the House of Commons he 
secured a larger audience in coming gen- 
erations. The material of his speeches is of 
such a vital quality that it possesses a value 
wholly apart from the time and occasion of its 
delivery. 

Much the same is true of Sumner, who would 
have had decidedly the advantage of Burke so 
far as personal impressiveness is concerned. 
His Phi Beta Kappa address of 1845 is so rich 
in material that it is even more interesting to 
read now than when it was first delivered, and 
his remarks on Allston in that oration might be 
considered to advantage by every art critic in 
the country. It should always be remembered 
that a speech, like a play, is written not to be 
read, but to be acted; and those discourses 
which read so finely in the newspapers are not 



SUMNER 217 

commonly the ones that sounded the best when 
they were delivered. 

Great men create great antagonisms. The 
antagonism which Lincoln excited was concen- 
trated in Booth ^s pistol shot, and the Mon- 
tagues and Capulets became reconciled over 
his bier; but the antagonism against Sumner 
still continues to smoke and smoulder like the 
embers of a dying conflagration. 



CHEVALIER HOWE. 

The finest modern statue in Berlin is that of 
General Ziethen, the great Hussar commander 
in the Seven Years' War.* He stands leaning 
on his sabre in a dreamy, nonchalant attitude, 
as if he were in the centre of indifference and 
life had little interest for him. Yet there never 
was a man more ready for action, or more quick 
to seize upon and solve the nodus of any new 
emergency. The Prussian anecdote -books are 
full of his exploits and hairbreadth escapes, a 
number of which are represented around the 
base of the statue. He combined the intelli- 
gence of the skilful general with the physical 
dexterity of an acrobat. 

Very much such a man was Samuel Gridley 
Howe, born in Boston November 10, 1801, whom 
Whittier has taken as the archetype of an 
American hero in his time. 

If a transient guest at the Bird Club should 
have seen Doctor Howe sitting at the table with 
his indifferent, nonchalant air, head leaning 
slightly forward and his grayish-black hair 
almost falling into his eyes, he would never have 

* Von Scliliiter^s statue of the Great Elector is of course 
a more magnificent work of art. 
218 



CHEVALIER HOWE 219 

imagined that he was the man who had fought 
the Turks hand-to-hand like Cervantes and Sir 
John Smith; who had been imprisoned in a 
Prussian dungeon; who had risked his life in 
the July Revolution at Paris; and who had 
taken the lead in an equally important philan- 
thropic revolution in his own country. 

Next to Sumner he is the most distinguished 
member of the club, even more so than Andrew 
and Wilson ; a man with a most enviable record. 
He does not talk much where many are gathered 
together, but if he hears an imprudent state- 
ment, especially an unjust estimate of charac- 
ter, his eyes flash out from beneath the bushy 
brows, and he makes a correction which just 
hits the nail on the head. He is fond of his own 
home and is with difficulty enticed away from it. 
Once in awhile he will dash out to Cambridge 
on horseback to see Longfellow, but the lion- 
huntresses of Boston spread their nets in vain 
for him. He will not even go to the dinner par- 
ties for which Mrs. Howe is in constant demand, 
but prefers to spend the evening with his chil- 
dren, helping them about their school lessons, 
and listening to the stories of their everyday 
experiences. 

There never was a more modest, unostenta- 
tious hero; and no one has recorded his hair- 
breadth escapes and daring adventures, for 
those who witnessed them never told the tale, 



220 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

nor would Doctor Howe willingly speak of tliem 
himself. He was of too active a temperament 
to be mncli of a scholar in his youth, although in 
after life he went through with whatever he 
undertook in a thorough and conscientious man- 
ner. He went to Brown University, and appears 
to have lived much the same kind of life there 
which Lowell did at Harvard, — full of good 
spirits, admired by his classmates, as well as by 
the young ladies of Providence, and excep- 
tionally fond of practical jokes ; always getting 
into small difficulties and getting out of them 
again with equal facility. He was so amiable 
and warm-hearted that nobody could help loving 
him ; and so it continued to the end of his life. 

He could not himself explain exactly why he 
joined the Greek Ee volution. He had suffered 
himself while at school from the tyranny of 
older boys, and this strengthened the sense of 
right and justice that had been implanted in his 
nature. He had not the romantic disposition of 
Byron ; neither could he have gone from a de- 
sire to win the laurels of Miltiades, for he never 
indicated the least desire for celebrity. It seems 
more likely that his adventurous disposition 
urged him to it, as one man takes to science and 
another to art. 

It was certainly a daring adventure to enlist 
as a volunteer against the Turks. Byron might 
expect that whatever advantage wealth and rep- 



CHEVALIER HOWE 221 

utation can obtain for an individual lie could 
always count upon; but what chances would 
young Howe have in disaster or defeat! I 
never heard that Byron did much fighting, 
though he spent his fortune freely in the cause ; 
and Doctor Howe, as it happened, was not 
called upon to fight in line of battle, though 
he was engaged in some pretty hot skirmishes 
and risked himself freely. 

He went to Greece in the summer of 1824 and 
remained till after the battle of Navarino in 
1827. Greece was saved, but the land was a 
desert and its people starving. Doctor Howe 
returned to America to raise funds and beg 
provisions for liberated Hellas, in which he was 
remarkably successful ; but we find also that he 
published a history of the Greek Revolution, the 
second edition of which is dated 1828. For this 
he must have collected the materials before 
leaving Greece; but as it contains an account 
of the sea-fight of Navarino, it must have been 
finished after his return to America. The book 
was hastily written, and hastily published. To 
judge from appearances it was hurried through 
the press without being revised either by its 
author or a competent proofreader ; but it is a 
vigorous, spirited narrative, and the best chron- 
icle of that period in English. Would there were 
more such histories, even if the writing be not 
always grammatical. Doctor Howe does not 



222 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

sentimentalize over the ruins of Sparta or 
Plato 's Academy, but lie describes Greece as he 
found it, and its inhabitants as he knew them. 
He possesses what so many historians lack, and 
that is the graphic faculty. He writes in a bet- 
ter style than either Motley or Bancroft. His 
book ought to be revised and reprinted. 

We quote from it this clearsighted descrip- 
tion of the preparation for a Grseco-Turkish 
sea-fight : 

" Soon the proud fleet of the Capitan Pashaw was seen 
coming down toward Samos, and the Greek vessels ad- 
vanced to meet it. And here one cannot but pause a mo- 
ment to compare the two parties, and wonder at the con- 
trast between them. On one side bore down a long line of 
lofty ships whose very size and weight seemed to give them 
a slow and stately motion; completely furnished at every 
point for war; their decks crowded with splendidly armed 
soldiers, and their sides chequered with double and triple- 
rows of huge cannon that it seemed could belch forth a mass 
of iron which nothing could resist. On the other side came 
flying along the waves a squadron of light brigs and schoon- 
ers, beautifully modelled, with sails of snowy white, and 
with fancifully painted sides, showing but a single row of 
tiny cannon. There seemed no possibility of a contest; 
one fleet had only to sail upon the other, and by its very 
weight, bear the vessels under water without flring a gun. 

" But the feelings which animated them were very differ- 
ent. The Turks were clumsy sailors; they felt ill at ease 
and as if in a new element; but above all, they felt a dread 
of Greek fire-ships, which made them imagine every vessel 
that approached them to be one. The Greeks were at 



CHEVALIER HOWE 223 

home on the waves, — active and fearless mariners, they knew 
that they could run around a Turkish frigate and not be 
injured; they knew the dread their enemies had of fire- 
ships, and they had their favorite, the daring Kanaris, with 
them." 

The heroic deeds of the modern Greeks fully 
equalled those of the ancients ; and the death of 
Marco Bozzaris was celebrated in all the lan- 
guages of western Europe. William Miiller, the 
German poet, composed a volume of fine lyrics 
upon the incidents of the Greek Revolution ; so 
that after his death the Greek Government sent 
a shipload of marble to Germany for the con- 
struction of his monument. 

One day Doctor Howe, with a small party of 
followers, was anchored in a yawl off the Co- 
rinthian coast, when a Turk crept down to the 
shore and commenced firing at them from be- 
hind a large tree. After he had done this twice, 
the doctor calculated where he would appear 
the third time, and firing at the right moment 
brought him down with his face to the earth. 
Doctor Howe often fired at Turks in action, but 
this was the only one that he felt sure of having 
killed; and he does not appear to have even 
communicated the fact to his own family. 

After Doctor Howe's triumphant return to 
Greece with a cargo of provisions in 1828 he 
was appointed surgeon-general of the Greek 
navy, and finally, as a reward for all his ser- 



224 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

vices, he received a present of Byron's cavalry 
helmet, — certainly a rare trophy.* 

Doctor Howe's mysterious imprisonment in 
Berlin in 1832 is the more enigmatical since 
Berlin has generally been the refuge of the op- 
pressed from other European countries. The 
Huguenots, expelled by Louis XIV., went to 
Berlin in such numbers that they are supposed 
by Menzel to have modified the character of its 
inhabitants. The Salzburg refugees were wel- 
comed in Prussia by Frederick William L, who 
had an official hanged for embezzling funds that 
were intended for their benefit. In 1770 Fred- 
erick the Great gave asylum to the Jesuits who 
had been expelled from every Catholic capi- 
tal in Europe; and when the brothers Grimm 
and other professors were banished from Cas- 
sel for their liberalism, they were received and 
given positions by Frederick William IV. Why 
then should the Prussian government have in- 
terfered with Doctor Howe, after he had com- 
pleted his philanthropic mission to the Polish 
refugees? Why was he not arrested in the 
Polish camp when he first arrived there! 

The futile and tyrannical character of this 
proceeding points directly to Metternich, who 
at that time might fairly be styled the Tiberias 



* This helmet hung for many years on the hat-tree at 
Dr. Howe's house in South Boston. 



CHEVALIER HOWE 225 

of Germany. The Greek Revolution was hate- 
ful to Metternich, and he did what he could to 
prevent its success. His intrigues in England 
certainly delayed the independence of Greece 
for two years and more. He foresaw clearly 
enough that its independence would be a con- 
stant annoyance to the Austrian government, — 
and so it has proved down to the present time. 
Metternich imagined intrigues and revolution 
in every direction ; and besides, there can be no 
doubt of the vindictiveness of his nature. The 
cunning of the fox is not often combined with 
the supposed magnanimity of the lion. 

The account of his arrest, which Doctor Howe 
gave George L. Stearns, differs very slightly 
from that in Sanborn's biography. According 
to the former he persuaded the Prussian police, 
on the ground of decency, to remain outside his 
door until he could dress himself. In this way 
he gained time to secrete his letters. He tore 
one up and divided the small pieces in various 
places. While he was doing this he noticed a 
bust of some king of Prussia on top of the high 
porcelain stove which forms a part of the fur- 
niture of every large room in Berlin. Conclud- 
ing it must be hollow he tipped it on edge and 
inserted the rest of his letters within. The 
police never discovered this stratagem, but they 
searched his room in the most painstaking man- 
ner, collecting all the pieces of the letter he had 

15 



226 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

torn up, so that they read every word of it. 
Whether his letters were really of a compro- 
mising character, or he was only afraid that 
they might be considered so, has never been ex- 
plained. 

The day after his arrest he was brought be- 
fore a tribunal and asked a multitude of ques- 
tions, which he appears to have answered wil- 
lingly enough; and a week or more later the 
same examiners made a different set of inqui- 
ries of him, all calculated to throw light upon his 
former answers. Doctor Howe admitted after- 
wards that if he had attempted to deceive them 
they would certainly have discovered the fact. 
He was in prison five weeks, for which the Prus- 
sian government had the impudence to charge 
him board ; and why President Jackson did not 
demand an apology and reparation for this out- 
rage on a United States citizen is not the least 
mysterious part of the affair. 

A good Samaritan does not always find a 
good Samaritan. After his return to Paris 
Doctor Howe went to England, but was taken 
so severely ill on the way that he did not know 
what might have become of him but for an 
English passenger with whom he had become 
acquainted and who carried him to his own 
house and cared for him until he was fully 
recovered. This excellent man, name now 
forgotten, had a charming daughter who ma- 



CHEVALIER HOWE 227 

terially assisted in Howe's convalescence, and 
he said afterwards that if he had not been 
strongly opposed to matrimony at that time 
she wonld probably have become his wife. He 
was not married until ten years later; but he 
always remembered this incident as one of the 
pleasantest in his life. 

The true hero never rests on his laurels. 
Doctor Howe had no sooner returned from 
Europe than he set himself to work on a de- 
sign he had conceived in Paris for the instruc- 
tion of the blind. Next to Doctor Morton's 
discovery of etherization, there has been no 
undertaking equal to this for the amelioration 
of human misery. He brought the best meth- 
ods from Europe, and improved upon them. 
Beginning at first in a small way, and with 
such means as he could obtain from the mer- 
chants of Boston, he went on to great achieve- 
ments. He had the most difficulty in dealing 
with legislative appropriations and enact- 
ments, for as he was not acquainted with the 
ruling class in Massachusetts, they conse- 
quently looked upon him with suspicion. He 
not only made the plan, but he carried it out; 
he organized the institution at South Boston 
and set the machinery in motion. 

The story of Laura Bridgman is a tale told in 
many languages. The deaf and blind girl whom 
Doctor Howe taught to read and to think soon 



228 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

became as celebrated as Franklin or Webster. 
She was between seven and eight years old 
when he first discovered her near Hanover, N. 
H., and for five years and a half she had neither 
seen nor heard. It is possible that she could 
remember the external world in a dim kind of 
way, and she must have learned to speak a 
few words before she lost her hearing. Doc- 
tor Howe taught her the names of different 
objects by pasting them in raised letters on 
the objects about her, and he taught her to 
spell by means of separate blocks with the 
letters upon them. She then was taught to 
read after the usual method of instructing the 
blind, and communicated with her fingers after 
the manner of deaf mutes. Doctor Howe said 
in his report of the case : 

" Hitherto, the process had been mechanical, and the 
success about as great as teaching a veiy knowing dog a 
variety of tricks. The poor child had sat in mute amaze- 
ment and patiently imitated everything her teacher did; 
but now the truth began to flash upon her; her intellect 
began to work; she perceived that here was a way by 
which she could herself make up a sign of anything that 
was in her own mind, and show it to another mind, and at 
once her countenance lighted up with a human expression; 
it was no longer a dog or parrot, — it was an immortal spirit, 
eagerly seizing upon a new link of union with other 
spirits !" 

Finally she was educated in the meaning of 
the simplest abstract terms like right and 



CHEVALIER HOWE 229 

wrong, happy and sad, crooked and straight, 
and in this she evinced great intelligence, for 
she described being alone as all one, and being 
together all tivo, — the original meaning of alone 
and altogether, which few persons think of. In 
trying to express herself where she found some 
difficulty she made use of agglutinative forms of 
speech.* 

The education of Laura has rare value as a 
psychological study ; for it proves incontestably 
that mind is a thing in itself, and not merely a 
combination of material forces, as the philoso- 
phers of our time would have us believe. Laura 
Bridgman's mind was there, though wholly un- 
able to express itself, and so soon as the magic 
key was turned, she developed as rapidly and 
intelligently as other girls of her age. She 
soon became much more intelligent than the 
best trained dog who has all his senses in an 
acute condition ; and she developed a sensibility 
toward those about her such as Indian or Hot- 
tentot girls of the same age would not have done 
at all. She soon began to indicate that sense 
of order which is the first step on the stairway 
of civilization. If these qualities had not been 
in her they never could have come out. 

Why is it that so many superior women re- 
main unmarried, and why do men of superior 

* Like the Aztecs, Kanaekers and other primitive races. 



230 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

intellect and exceptional character so often 
mate themselves with weak or narrow-minded 
women? That a diffident man, with a taste for 
playing on the flute, should be captured by a 
virago, is not so remarkable, — that is his nat- 
ural weakness; but it is also true that the 
worthiest man often chooses indifferently. 
This thing they call matrimony is in fact like 
diving for pearls : you bring up the oyster, but 
what it contains does not appear until after- 
ward. A friend of Sumner, who imagined his 
wife had a beautiful nature because she was 
fond of wild-flowers, discovered too late that she 
cared more for botany than for her husband. 

Chevalier Howe met with better fortune. He 
waited long and to good purpose. It was fitting 
that such a man should marry a poetess ; and 
he found her, not in her rose-garden or some 
romantic sylvan retreat, but in the city of New 
York. Miss Julia Ward was the daughter, as 
she once styled herself, of the Bank of Com- 
merce, but her mind was not bent on money or a 
fashionable life. She was graceful, witty and 
charming in the drawing-room; but there was 
also a serious vein in her nature which could 
only be satisfied by earnest thought and study. 
She went from one book to another through the 
whole range of critical scholarship, disdaining 
everything that was not of the best quality. 
She soon knew so much that the young men be- 



CHEVALIER HOWE 231 

came afraid of her, but she cared less for their 
admiration than for her favorite authors. 
Above all, the deep religious vein in her nature, 
which never left her, served as a balance to her 
romantic disposition. Her first admirer is said 
to have been an eloquent preacher who came to 
New York while Miss Ward was in her teens. 

Another man might have crossed Julia 
Ward's path and only have remembered her as 
a Summer friend. Doctor Howe recognized the 
opportunity, and had no intention of letting it 
slip. His reputation and exceptional character 
attracted her ; and he wooed and won her with 
the same courage that he fought the Greeks. 
Her sister married Crawford, the best sculptor 
of his time, whom Sumner helped to fame and 
fortune. 

Doctor Howe's wedding journey, which in- 
cluded a complete tour of Europe, seems to 
have been the first rest that he had taken in 
twenty years. Such wedding journeys are fre- 
quent enough now, but it is a rare bride that 
finds the doors of distinguished houses opened 
to her husband from Edinburgh to Athens. 
Was it not a sufficient reward for any man's 
service to humanity? 

For that matter Doctor Howe's lifelong work 
received comparatively slight recognition or re- 
ward. A few medals were sent to him from 
Europe, — a gold one from the King of Prussia, 



232 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

— and he was always looked upon in Boston as a 
distinguished citizen; but his vocation at the 
Blind Asylum withdrew him from the public 
eye, and the public soon forgets what happened 
yesterday. What a blaze of enthusiasm there 
was for Admiral Dewey in 1899, and how coldly 
his name was received as a presidential candi- 
date one year later ! 

Doctor Howe was once nominated for Con- 
gress as a forlorn hope, and his name was 
thrice urged unavailingiy for foreign appoint- 
ments. He certainly deserved to be made Min- 
ister to Greece, but President Johnson looked 
upon him as a very ^' ultra man^', — the real ob- 
jection being no doubt that he was a friend of 
Sumner, and the second attempt made by Sum- 
ner himself was defeated by Hamilton Fish. 
Doctor Howe was fully qualified at any time 
to be Minister to France, and as well qualified 
as James Eussell Lowell for the English Mis- 
sion; but the appointment of such men as 
Lowell and Howe has proved to be a happy 
accident rather than according to the natural 
order of events. What reward did Doctor 
Morton ever obtain, until twenty-five years 
after his death his name was emblazoned in 
memorial hall of Boston State House! It is 
an old story. 

Yet Doctor Howe may well be considered 
one of the most fortunate Americans of his 



CHEVALIER HOWE 233 

time. Lack of public appreciation is the least 
evil that can befall a man of truly great spirit, 
— unless indeed it impairs the usefulness of his 
work, and Edward Everett, who had sympa- 
thized so cordially with Doctor Howe's efforts 
in behalf of the Greeks, could also have told 
him sympathetically that domestic happiness 
was fully as valuable as public honor. Fortu- 
nate is the man who has wandered much over 
the earth and seen great sights, only the better 
to appreciate the quiet and repose of his own 
hearth-stone! The storm and stress period of 
Doctor Howe's life was over, and henceforth it 
was to be all blue sky and smooth sailing. 

Sumner expressed a kind of regret at Doctor 
Howe's marriage, — a regret for his own loneli- 
ness ; but he found afterwards that instead of 
losing one friend he had made another. His 
visits to South Boston were as frequent as ever, 
and he often brought distinguished guests with 
him, — English, French, and German. There 
was no lady in Boston whom he liked to con- 
verse with so well as Mrs. Howe ; and if he met 
her on the street he would almost invariably 
stop to speak with her a few minutes. He some- 
times suffered from the keen sallies of her wit, 
but he accepted this as part of the entertain- 
ment, and once informed her that if she were 
president of the Senate it would be much better 
for the procedure of the public business. 



234 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

George Sumner also came; like his brother, 
a man much above the average in general abil- 
ity, and considered quite equal to the delivery 
of a Fourth of July oration. He was the more 
entertaining talker of the two, and in other re- 
spects very much like Tom Appleton, — better 
known on the Paris boulevards than in his na- 
tive country. Instead of being witty like Apple- 
ton he was brilliantly encyclopaedic; and they 
both carried their statements to the verge of 
credibility. 

Doctor Howe organized the blind asylum so 
that it almost ran itself without his oversight, 
and as always happens in such cases he was 
idolized by those who were under his direction. 
There was something exceedingly kind in his 
tone of voice, — a voice accustomed to command 
and yet much subdued. His manner towards 
children was particularly charming and attrac- 
tive. He exemplified the lines in Emerson's 
^'Wood-notes": 

" Grave, chaste, contented though retired, 
And of all other men desired," 

applied to Doctor Howe more completely than 
to the person for whom they were originally 
intended; for Thoreau's bachelor habits and 
isolated mode of life prevented him from being 
an attractive person to the generality of man- 
kind. 



CHEVALIER HOWE 235 

It was said of James G. Blaine that he left 
every man he met with the impression that he 
was his best friend. This may have been well 
intended, but it has the effect of insincerity, for 
the thing is practically impossible. The true 
gentleman has always a kind manner, but he 
does not treat the man whom he has just been 
introduced to as a friend; he waits for that 
until he shall know him better. It is said of 
Americans generally that they are generous and 
philanthropic, but that they do not make good 
friends, — that their idea of friendship depends 
too much on association and the influence of 
mutual interests, instead of the underlying 
sense of spiritual relationship. When they 
cease to have mutual interests the friendship is 
at an end, or only continues to exist on paper. 
Doctor Howe was as warm-hearted as he was 
firm-hearted, but he never gave his full confi- 
dence to any one until he had read him through 
to the backbone. His friends were so fond of 
him that they would go any distance to see him. 
His idea of friendship seemed to be like that of 
the friends in the sacred band of Thebes, whose 
motto was either to avenge their comrades on 
the field of battle or to die with them. 

He did not like a hypocritical morality, which 
he said too often resulted in the hypocritical 
sort. He complained of this in Emerson's 
teaching, which he thought led his readers to 



236 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

scrutinize themselves too closely as well as to 
be too censorious of others ; and he respected 
Emerson more for his manly attitude on the 
Kansas question than for anything he wrote. 

He always continued to be the chevalier. He 
was like Hawthorne's gray-haired champion, 
who always came to the front in a public emer- 
gency, and then disappeared, no one knew 
whither. When the Bond Street riot took place 
in 1837, there was Doctor Howe succoring the 
oppressed; in 1844 he joined the Conscience 
Whigs and was one of the foremost among 
them ; he helped materially toward the election 
of Sumner in 1851, and for years afterwards 
was a leader in the vigilance committee organ- 
ized to resist the Fugitive Slave law. He stood 
shoulder to shoulder with George L. Stearns in 
organizing resistance to the invasions of Kan- 
sas by the Missourians ; and again in 1862 when 
Harvard University made its last desperate 
political effort in opposition to Lincoln's Eman- 
cipation Proclamation; but when his friends 
and his party came into power Howe neither 
asked nor hinted at any reward for his bril- 
liant services. 

Edward L. Pierce, the biographer of Sum- 
ner, was not above exhibiting his prejudices as 
to certain members of the Bird Club, both by 
what he has written and what he neglected to 
write. He says of the Chevalier: ''Dr. Howe, 



CHEVALIER HOWE 237 

who had a passion for revolutions and civil dis- 
turbances of all kinds, and had no respect for 
the restrictions of international law or comity, 
was vexed with Sumner for not promoting the 
intervention of the 'United States in behalf of 
the insurgent Cubans/' 

This reminds one of BoswelPs treatment of 
Doctor Johnson's friends. Like John Adams 
and Hampden, Doctor Howe was a revolution- 
ary character, — and so were Sumner and Lin- 
coln, — but he was a man in all matters prudent, 
discreet and practical. He was as much op- 
posed to inflammatory harangues and French 
socialistic notions as he was to the hide-bound 
conservatism against which he had battled all 
his life. Like Hampden and Adams his revo- 
lutionary strokes were well timed and right to 
the point. Experience has proved them to be 
effective and salutary. It was the essential 
merit of Sumner and his friends that they 
recognized the true character of the times in 
which they lived and adapted themselves to it. 
Thousands of well-educated men lived through 
the anti-slavery and civil war period without 
being aware that they were taking part in one 
of the great revolutionary epochs of history. 
That Doctor Howe and Senator Sumner dif- 
fered in regard to the Cuban rebellion is a 
matter of small moment. Howe considered 
the interests of the Cubans; Sumner the in- 



238 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

terests of republicanism in Spain and in Eu- 
rope generally. Both were right from their 
respective standpoints. 

At the beginning of the war he was sixty 
years of age, — too old to t^ke an active part in 
it. This cannot be doubted, however, that if he 
had been thirty years younger he would either 
have won distinction as a commander or have 
fallen on the field of honor. The best con- 
tribution from the Howe family to the war 
was Julia Ward Howe's ^'Battle Hymn of 
the Republic." The war was a grand moral 
struggle, a conflict of historical forces; and 
neither Lowell, Emerson, nor Whittier ex- 
pressed this so fully and with such depth of 
feeling as Mrs. Howe. There are occasions 
when woman rises superior to man, and this 
was one of them. It was evidently inspired by 
the John Brown song, that simple martial mel- 
ody; but it rises above the personal and tem- 
poral into the universal and eternal. Its meas- 
ure has the swing of the Greek tragic chorus, 
extended to embrace the wider scope of Chris- 
tian faith, and its diction is of an equally classic 
purity and vigor. The last stanza runs : 



" In the beauty of the lily Christ was born across the sea, 
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me. 
As he died to make men holy let us die to make men free ; 
As we go marching on." 



CHEVALIER HOWE 239 

This was the fine fruit of Mrs. Howe's early 
religious faith. It welled up in her nature from 
a deep undercurrent, which few would have sus- 
pected who only met her at Sam G. Ward's din- 
ner parties and other fashionable entertain- 
ments. Yet, there was always a quiet reserve 
in her laughter, and her wittiest remarks were 
always followed by a corresponding seriousness 
of expression. Although she studied Spinoza, 
admired Emerson, and attended meetings of the 
Eadical Club on Chestnut Street, she never sep- 
arated herself from the Church, and always ex- 
pressed her dissent from any opinion that 
seemed to show a lack of reverence. 

On a certain occasion when a member of the 
club spoke of newspapers as likely to supersede 
the pulpit, Mrs. Howe replied to him: ^^God 
forbid that should happen. God forbid we 
should do without the pulpit. It is the old fable 
of the hare and the tortoise. We need the hare 
for light running, but the slow, steady tortoise 
wins the goal at last." Religious subjects, how- 
ever, were not so much discussed at the Radical 
Club as philosophy and politics, — and in these 
Mrs. Howe felt herself very much at home. 

On another occasion, when a member of the 
club said that he was prepared, like Emerson, to 
accept the universe, Mrs. Howe interposed with 
the remark that it was Margaret Fuller who ac- 
cepted the universe; she ^^was not aware that 



240 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

the universe had been offered to Emerson." 
She said this because Margaret Fuller was a 
woman. 

Once, when writing for the newspapers was 
under discussion, Mrs. Howe remarked that in 
that kind of composition one felt prescribed like 
St. Simeon Stylites by the limitations of the 
column. 

One of the best of her witty poems describes 
Boston on a rainy day, and is called ''Ex- 
pluvior," an innocent parody on Longfellow's 
^'Excelsior," which, by the way, ought to have 
been called Excelsius. 

" The butcher came a walking flood, 
Drenching the kitchen where he stood. 
^ Deucalion, is your name V I pray. 
^ Moses,' he choked and slid away. 

Expluvior/' 

is one of the most characteristic verses ; but in 
the last stanza she wishes to construct a dam at 
the foot of Beacon Hill and cause a flood that 
would sweep the rebel sympathizers out of 
Boston. 

The office of the Blind Asylum was formerly 
near the middle of Bromfield Street on the 
sou1:hern side. This is now historic ground. 
Between 1850 and 1870 some of the most im- 
portant national councils were held there in Dr. 
Howe 's private office. It was the first place that 



CHEVALIER HOWE 241 

Sumner went to in the morning and the last 
place that Governor Andrew stopped before re- 
turning to his home at night. There Dr. Howe 
and George L. Stearns consulted with John 
Brown concerning measures for the defence of 
Kansas; and there Howe, Stearns, and Bird 
concerted plans for the election of Andrew in 
1860, and for the re-election of Sumner in 1862. 
It was a quiet, retired spot in the midst of a 
bustling city, where a celebrated man could go 
without attracting public attention. 

Chevalier Howe outlived Sumner just one 
year, and Wilson followed him not long after. 



16 



THE WAR GOVERNOR. 

Sebago is one of the most beautiful of the 
New England lakes, and has been celebrated in 
Longfellow's verse for its curiously winding 
river between the upper and the lower portion, 
as well as for the Indian traditions connected 
with it; John A. Andrew's grandfather, like 
Hawthorne's father, lived in Salem and both 
families emigrated to Sebago, the former locat- 
ing himself in the small town of Windham. At 
the time when Hawthorne was sailing his little 
boat on the lake, at the age of fourteen, John 
Andrew was in his nurse's arms, — born May 
31, 1818. Like Hawthorne and Longfellow he 
went to Bowdoin College, but did not distin- 
guish himself there as a scholar, — had no hon- 
ors at commencement. We are still in ignor- 
ance concerning his college life, what his 
interests were, and how he spent his time ; but i 
Andrew never cared much for anything which i 
had not an immediate and practical value. ' 
Greek and Latin, merely for their own sake J 
as ancient languages, did not appeal to him;J 
nor did the desiccated history and cramping'' 
philosophy of those days attract him more 
strongly. Yet he ultimately developed one of 
tlie finest of American intellects. 

242 




JOHN A. ANDREW 



THE WAR GOVERNOR 243 

He was admitted to the Suffolk bar at the age 
of twenty-two. He had already formed decided 
opinions on the slavery question. The practi- 
tioner with whom he studied was precisely the 
opposite of Andrew, — a brilliant scholar, but 
formal and unsympathetic. Although a young 
man of fine promise he was soon excelled by his 
less learned but more energetic pupil. At the 
age of twenty-six we find Andrew presiding at 
a convention of Free-soilers, the same which 
nominated Dr. S. G. Howe for Congress. Why 
he did not appear in politics between 1844 and 
1859 is something of a mystery, which may be 
explained either by his devotion to his profes- 
sion or his unwillingness to make politics a pro- 
fession. He was in constant communication 
with Charles Francis Adams, Frank W. Bird, 
and other leading independents, and played a 
part in the election of Sumner as well as at vari- 
ous nominating conventions ; but he apparently 
neither sought office nor was sought for it. It 
may have been a modest conscientiousness of 
his own value, which prevented the acceptance 
of public honors until he was prepared to claim 
the best ; but the fact is difficult to account for 
on any supposition. 

Neither was his success at the bar remarkable. 
He never earned a large income, and died com- 
paratively poor. There were few who cared to 
meet him in debate, yet his legal scholarship 



244 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

was not exceptional, and liis political opinions 
may have proved an impediment to him in a 
city which was still devoted to Webster and 
Winthrop. Moreover, his kindness of heart 
prompted him to undertake a large number of 
cases for which he received little or no remuner- 
ation. As late as 1856 he was known as the 
poor man's lawyer rather than as a distin- 
guished pleader. One cannot help reflecting 
what might have been John A. Andrew's for- 
tune if he had been born in Ohio or Illinois. In 
the latter State he would have proved a most 
important political factor ; for he was fully as 
able a speaker as Douglas, and he combined 
with this a large proportion of those estimable 
qualities which we all admire in Abraham Lin- 
coln. He had not the wit of Lincoln, nor his 
immense fund of anecdote, which helped so 
much to make him popular, but the cordial man- 
ners and manly frankness of Andrew were very 
captivating. He would have told Douglas to his 
face that he was a demagogue, as Mirabeau did 
to Eobespierre, and would have carried the au- 
dience with him. It certainly seems as if he 
would have risen to distinction there more rap- 
idly than in old-fashioned, conventional Boston. 
Governor Andrew was an inch shorter than 
the average height of man, and much resem- 
bled Professor Child in personal appearance. 
He was a larger man than Professor Child, and 



THE WAR GOVERNOR 245 

his hair was darker, but he had the same round, 
good-humored face, with keen penetrating eyes 
beneath a brow as finely sculptured as that of a 
Greek statue, and closely curling hair above it. 
He was broad-shouldered, remarkably so, and 
had a strong figure but not a strong constitu- 
tion. His hands were soft and as white as 
a woman's; and though his step was quick and 
elastic he disliked to walk long distances, and 
was averse to physical exercise generally. 

He also resembled Professor Child in charac- 
ter, — frank without bluntness; sincere both 
formally and intellectually, — full to the brim of 
moral courage. He was not only kind-hearted, 
but very tender-hearted, so that his lips would 
quiver on occasions and his eyes fill with tears, 
— what doctors improperly call a lachrymose 
nature ; but in regard to a question of principle 
or public necessity he was as firm as Plymouth 
Eock. Neither did he deceive himself, as kindly 
persons are too apt to do, in regard to the true 
conditions of the case in hand. He would in- 
terrogate an applicant for assistance in as 
judicious a manner as he would a witness in a 
court room. He never degenerated into the pro- 
fessed philanthropist, who makes a disagree- 
able and pernicious habit of one of the noblest 
attributes of man. ^^A mechanical virtue,'' he 
would say, '^is no virtue at all." 

The impressions of youth are much stronger 



246 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

and more enduring than those of middle life, 
and I still remember Andrew as he appeared 
presiding at the meeting for the benefit of 
John Brown's wife and daughters in November, 
1859. This was his first notable appearance 
before the public, and nothing could have been 
more daring or more likely to make him unpop- 
ular; and yet within twelve months he was 
elected Governor. His attitude and his whole 
appearance was resolute and intrepid. He had 
set his foot down, and no power on earth could 
induce him to withdraw it. A clergyman who 
had been invited to speak at the meeting had at 
first accepted, but being informed by some of 
his parishioners that the thing would not do, 
declined with the excuse that he had supposed 
there would be two sides to the question. ^^As 
if," said Andrew, ^Hhere could be two sides to 
the question whether John Brown's wife and 
daughters should be permitted to starve." 
Thomas Russell, Judge of the Superior Court, 
sat close under the platform, clapping his 
hands like pistol shots. 

John A. Andrew's testimony before the Har- 
per's Ferry investigating committee has a his- 
torical value which Hay and Nicolay, Wilson, 
and Von Hoist would have done well to have 
taken into consideration ; but the definitive his- 
tory of the war period is yet to be written. 
There was no reason why Andrew should have 



THE WAR GOVERNOR 247 

been summoned. He had never met John 
Brown but once — at a lady's house in Boston — 
and had given him twenty-five dollars without 
knowing what was to be done with it. Jefferson 
Davis and the other Southern members of the 
committee evidently sent for him to make capi- 
tal against the Republican party, but the result 
was different from what they anticipated. 
Andrew told them squarely that the Harper's 
Ferry invasion was the inevitable consequence 
of their attempt to force slavery on Kansas 
against the will of its inhabitants, and that the 
Pottawatomie massacre, whether John Brown 
was connected with it or not, was not so bad in 
its moral effect as the assault on Sumner. It 
was what they might expect from attempting 
to tyrannize over frontier farmers. It is not 
to be supposed that such men will be governed 
by the nice sense of justice of an eastern law 
court. 

His testimony in regard to the personal mag- 
netism of John Brown is of great value ; but he 
also admitted that there was something about 
the old man which he could not quite under- 
stand, — a mental peculiarity which may have 
resulted from his hard, barren life, or the fixed- 
ness of his purpose. 

Andrew had already been elected to the Leg- 
islature, and had taken his seat there in Janu- 
ary, 1860. Almost in an instant he became the 



248 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

leader of his party in the House. Always ready 
to seize the right moment, he united the two 
essential qualities of a debater, a good set 
speech and a pertinent reply. Perfectly fear- 
less and independent, he was exactly the man to 
guide his party through a critical period. There 
were few in the house who cared to interfere 
with him. 

Andrew was chairman of the Massachusetts 
delegation at the Chicago Convention in May, 
and although he voted for Seward he was di- 
rectly instrumental in the nomination of Lin- 
coln. It is said to have been at his suggestion 
that the Massachusetts delegation called to- 
gether the delegations of those States that de- 
feated Fremont in 1856, and inquired of them 
which of the candidates would be most certain 
to carry their constituencies; and with one 
accord they all answered Lincoln. Thus Lin- 
coln's nomination was practically assured be- 
fore the voting began. 

It has been repeatedly asserted that the nom- 
ination of Andrew for Governor was the result 
of a general popular movement; but this was 
simply impossible. He was chiefly known to the 
voters of the State at that time as the presiding 
officer of a John Brown meeting, and that was 
quite as likely to retard as to advance his in- 
terests. He had, however, become a popular 
leader in the Legislature, and the fact that Gov- 



THE WAR GOVERNOR 249 

ernor Banks was opposed to him and cast his 
influence in favor of a Pittsfield candidate, left 
a sort of political vacuum in the more populous 
portion of the State, which Frank W. Bird and 
Henry L. Pierce took advantage of to bring his 
name forward. Sumner and Wilson threw their 
weight into the scales, and Andrew was easily 
nominated ; but he owed this to Frank W. Bird 
more than to any other supporter. 

In the New York Herald of December 20, 
1860, there was the following item : ' ' Governor- 
elect Andrew, of Massachusetts, and George L. 
Stearns have gone to Washington together, and 
it is said that the object of their visit is to 
brace up weak-kneed Bepublicans.'^ This was 
one object of their journey, but they also went 
to survey the ground and see what was the 
true state of affairs at the Capital. Stearns 
wrote from Washington to the Bird Club: 
^^The watchword here is ^Keep quiet,' " a 
sentence full of significance for the interpreta- 
tion of the policy pursued by the Eepublican 
leaders that winter. Andrew returned with the 
conviction that war was imminent and could not 
be prevented. His celebrated order in regard 
to the equipment of the State militia followed 
immediately, and after the bombardment of 
Fort Sumter this was looked upon as a true 
prophecy. He foresaw the dijfficulty at Balti- 
more, and had already chartered steamships to 



250 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

convey regiments to Washington, in case there 
should be a general uprising in Maryland. 

Both Sumner and Wilson opposed the ap- 
pointment of Greneral Butler to the command 
of the Massachusetts Volunteers, and preferred 
Caleb Gushing, who afterwards proved to be a 
more satisfactory member of the Eepublican 
party than Butler; but, on the whole, Andrew 
would seem to have acted judiciously. They 
were both bold, ingenious and quick-witted men, 
but it is doubtful if Gushing possessed the dash 
and intrepidity which Butler showed in dealing 
with the situation at Baltimore. That portion 
of his military career was certainly a good suc- 
cess, and how far he should be held responsible 
for the corrupt proceedings of his brother at 
New Orleans I do not undertake to decide. 

It is likely that Governor Andrew regretted 
his choice three weeks later, when General But- 
ler offered his services to the Governor of 
Maryland to suppress a slave insurrection 
which never took place, and of which there was 
no danger then or afterwards. A sharp corre- 
spondence followed between the Governor and 
the General, in which the latter nearly reached 
the point of insubordination. For excellent rea- 
sons this was not made public at the time, and 
is little known at the present day ; but General 
Butler owed his prominence in the war wholly 
to Governor Andrew's appointment. 



THE WAR GOVERNOR 251 

Another little-known incident was Andrew's 
action in regard to the meeting in memory of 
John Brown, which was held on December 2, 
1861, by Wendell Phillips, F. B. Sanborn and 
others, who were mobbed exactly as Garrison 
was mobbed thirty years earlier. The Mayor 
would do nothing to protect them, and when 
Wendell Phillips went to seek assistance from 
Andrew the latter declined to interfere. It 
wonld be a serious matter to interfere with the 
Mayor, and he did not feel that the occasion 
demanded it. Moreover he considered the cele- 
bration at that time to be prejudicial to the 
harmony of the Union cause. Phillips was 
already very much irritated and left the Gov- 
ernor's office in no friendly mood. Andrew 
might have said to him: ^You have been 
mobbed; what more do you want? There is 
no more desirable honor than to be mobbed in 
a good cause." 

Governor Andrew's appointments continued 
to be so favorable to the Democrats that Martin 
F. Conway, the member of Congress from Kan- 
sas, said : ' ^ The Governor has come into power 
with the help of his friends, and he intends to 
retain it by conciliating his opponents. ' ' It cer- 
tainly looked like this; but no one who knew 
Andrew intimately would believe that he acted 
from interested motives. Moreover it was 
wholly unnecessary to conciliate them. It is 



252 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

customary in Massachusetts to give the Gov- 
ernor three annual terms, and no more; but 
Andrew was re-elected four times, and it seemed 
as if he might have had as many terms as 
Caius Marius had consulships if he had only 
desired it. 

His object evidently was to unite all classes 
and parties in a vigorous support of the Union 
cause, and he could only do this by taking a 
number of colonels and other commissioned offi- 
cers from the Democratic ranks. For company 
officers there was no better recommendation to 
him than for a young man to be suspended, or 
expelled, from Harvard University. *' Those 
turbulent fellows, ' ' he said, ' ' always make good 
fighters, and, ' ' he added in a more serious tone, 
^ ^ some of them will not be greatly missed if they 
do not return. ' ' The young aristocrat who was 
expelled for threatening to tweak his profes- 
sor ^s nose obtained a commission at once. 

Another case of this sort was so pathetic that 
it deserves to be commemorated. Sumner Paine 
(named after Charles Sumner), the finest 
scholar in his class at Harvard, was suspended 
in June, 1863, for some trifling folly and went 
directly to the Governor for a commission as 
Lieutenant. Having an idea that the colored 
regiments were a particular hobby with the 
Governor, he asked for a place in one of them; 
but Andrew replied that the list was full; he 



THE WAR GOVERNOR 253 

could, however, give him a Lieutenancy in the 
Twentieth Massachusetts, which was then in 
pursuit of General Lee. Sumner Paine ac- 
cepted this, and ten days later he was shot dead 
on the field of Gettysburg. Governor Andrew 
felt very badly; for Paine was not only a fine 
scholar but very handsome, and, what is rare 
among hard students, full of energy and good 
spirits. 

Governor Andrew tried a number of conclu- 
sions, as Shakespeare would call them, with the 
National Government during the war, but the 
most serious difficulty of this kind resulted from 
Secretary Stanton's arbitrary reduction of the 
pay of colored soldiers from thirteen to eight 
dollars a month. This, of course, was a breach 
of contract, and Governor Andrew felt a per- 
sonal responsibility in regard to it, so far as the 
Massachusetts regiments were concerned. 

He first protested against it to the Secretary 
of War ; but, strange to say, Stanton obtained 
a legal opinion in justification of his order from 
William Whiting, the solicitor of the War De- 
partment. Governor Andrew then appealed to 
President Lincoln, who referred the case to At- 
torney-General Bates, and Bates, after examin- 
ing the question, reported adversely to Solicitor 
Whiting and notified President Lincoln that the 
Government would be liable to an action for 
damages. The President accordingly referred 



254 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

this report to Stanton, who paid no attention 
whatever to it. 

Meanwhile the Massachusetts Legislature had 
passed an act to make good the deficiency of 
^ye dollars a month to the Massachusetts col- 
ored regiments, but the private soldiers, with a 
magnanimity that should never be forgotten, 
refused to accept from the State what they con- 
sidered due them from the National Govern- 
ment. At last Governor Andrew applied to 
Congress for redress, declaring that if he did 
not live to see justice done to his soldiers in this 
world he would carry his appeal ^'before the 
Tribunal of Infinite Justice. '' 

Thaddeus Stevens introduced a bill for the 
purpose June 4, 1864, and after waiting a whole 
year the colored soldiers received their dues. 
Andrew declared in his message to Congress 
that this affair was a disgrace to the National 
Government ; and I fear we shall have to agree 
with him.* 

Sixty years ago Macaulay noticed the injuri- 
ous effects on oratory of newspaper publication. 
Parliamentary s]3eeches were written to be read 
rather than to be listened to. It was a pecu- 
liarity of Andrew, however, that he wrote his 

* At this time there were not less than five thousand offi- 
cers drawing pay in the Union armies above the requisite 
proportion of one officer to twenty-two privates. 



THE WAR GOVERNOR 255 

letters and even his messages to the Legislature 
as if he were making a speech. In conversation 
he was plain, sensible and kindly. 

He made no pretensions to oratory in his 
public addresses, but his delivery was easy, 
clear, and emphatic. At times he spoke rather 
rapidly, but not so much so as to create a con- 
fused impression. I never knew him to make 
an argumentum ad hominem, nor to indulge in 
those rhetorical tricks which even Webster and 
Everett were not wholly free from. He con- 
vinced his hearers as much by the fairness of 
his manner as by anything that he said. 

The finest passage in his speeches, as we read 
them now, is his tribute to Lincoln's character 
in his address to the Legislature, following 
upon Lincoln's assassination. After describing 
him as the man who had added '^martyrdom 
itself to his other and scarcely less emphatic 
claims to human veneration, gratitude and 
love," he continued thus: ''I desire on this 
grave occasion to record my sincere testimony 
to the unaffected simplicity of his manly pur- 
pose, to the constancy with which he devoted 
himself to his duty, to the grand fidelity with 
which he subordinated himself to his country, 
to the clearness, robustness, and sagacity of his 
understanding, to his sincere love of truth, his 
undeviating progress in its faithful pursuit, 
and to the confidence which he could not fail to 



256 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

inspire in the singular integrity of his virtues 
and the conspicuously judicial quality of his 
intellect. ' ' 

Could any closer and more comprehensive de- 
scription be given of Andrew's own character; 
and is there another statement so appreciative 
in the various biographies of Lincoln! 

The instances of his kindness and helpfulness 
were multitudinous, but have now mostly lapsed 
into oblivion. During his ^Ye years in office it 
seemed as if every distressed man, woman, and 
child came to the Governor for assistance. 
William G. Russell, who declined the position of 
Chief Justice, once said of him: ^^ There was 
no better recommendation to Andrew's favor 
than for a man to have been in the State's 
prison, if it could only be shown that he had 
been there longer than he deserved. ' ' 

Andrew considered the saving of a human 
soul more important than rescuing a human 
life. That he was often foiled, deceived, and 
disappointed in these reformatory attempts is 
perfectly true; but was it not better so than 
never to have made them? For a long time he 
had charge of an intemperate nephew, who even 
sold his overcoat to purchase drink; but the 
Governor never deserted the fellow and cared 
for him as well as he could. 

This is the more significant on account of 
Andrew's strong argument against prohibitory 



THE WAR GOVERNOR 257 

legislation, which was the last important act of 
his life. 

In February, 1864, there was a military ball 
at Concord for the benefit of the Thirty-second 
Massachusetts Regiment. Governor Andrew 
was present, and seeing the son of an old friend 
sitting in a corner and looking much neglected 
while his brother was dancing and having a fine 
time, the Governor went to him, took him by 
the arm and marched several times around the 
hall with him. He then went to Mrs. Haw- 
thorne, inquired what her husband was writing, 
and explained the battle of Gettysburg to her, 
drawing a diagram of it on a letter which he 
took from his coat pocket. Years afterwards 
Mrs. Hawthorne spoke of this as one of the 
pleasantest interviews of her life. 

He would come in late to dinner at the Bird 
Club, looking so full of force that he seemed as 
much like a steam-engine as a man. They usu- 
ally applauded him, but he paid no attention 
to it. ^'Waiter, bring me some minced fish with 
carrots and beets," he would say. His fish-din- 
ner became proverbial, but he complained that 
they could not serve it at fine hotels in the way 
our grandmothers made it. He said it did not 
taste the same. 

His private secretary states that Governor 
Andrew's favorite sans souci was to take a 
drive into the country with some friend, and 

17 



258 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

after he had passed the thickly settled suburbs 
to talk, laugh and jest as young men do on a 
yachting excursion, — but his talk was always re- 
fined. There was no recreation that Professor 
Francis J. Child liked better than this. 

Andrew's valedictory address on January 5, 
1865, which was chiefly concerned with the re- 
construction of the Southern States, was little 
understood at the time even by his friends ; and 
in truth he did not make out his scheme as 
clearly as he might have done. He considered 
negro suffrage the first essential of reconstruc- 
tion, but he did not believe in enfranchising the 
colored people and disfranchising the whites. 
He foresaw that this could only end in disaster ; 
and he advised that the rebellious States should 
remain under military government until the 
white people of the South should rescind their 
acts of secession and adopt negro suffrage of 
their own accord. There would have been cer- 
tain advantages in this over the plan that was 
afterwards adopted — that is, Sumner's plan — 
but it included the danger that the Southern 
States might have adopted universal suffrage 
and negro citizenship for the sake of Congres- 
sional representation, and afterwards have con- 
verted it into a dead letter, as it is at present. 
Andrew considered Lincoln's attempts at re- 
construction as premature, and therefore 
injudicious. 



THE WAR GOVERNOR 259 

For nearly twenty-five years John A. Andrew 
was a parishoner of Eev. James Freeman 
Clarke, who preached in Indiana Place Chapel. 
In 1848 Rev. Mr. Clarke desired to exchange 
with Theodore Parker, but older members of 
his parish strenuously opposed it. Andrew, 
then only twenty-seven years old, came forward 
in support of his pastor, and argued the case 
vigorously, not because he agreed with Parker's 
theological opinions, but because he considered 
the opposition illiberal. After this both Andrew 
and Clarke would seem to have become grad- 
ually more conservative, for when the latter 
delivered a sermon or lecture in 1866 in oppo- 
sition to Emerson's philosophy, the ex-Gov- 
ernor printed a public letter requesting him to 
repeat it. It is easy to trace the influence of 
James Freeman Clarke in Governor Andrew's 
religious opinions and Andrew's influence on 
Rev. Mr. Clarke's politics. Each was a firm 
believer in the other. 

The movement to supersede Sumner with 
Andrew as United States Senator, in 1869, orig- 
inated in what is called the Back Bay district. 
It was not because they loved Andrew there, 
but because they hated Sumner, who repre- 
sented to their minds the loss of political power 
which they had enjoyed from the foundation of 
the Republic until his election in 1850, and have 
never recovered it since. Andrew's political 



260 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

record and his democratic manners could hardly 
have been to their liking. 

The Boston aristocracy counted for success 
on the support of the Grand Army veterans, who 
were full of enthusiasm for Andrew; but it is 
not probable that the ex-Governor would have 
been willing to lead a movement which his best 
friends disapproved of, and which originated 
with the same class of men who tried so hard to 
defeat him in 1862. Moreover, they would have 
found a very sturdy opponent in Senator Wil- 
son. It was Wilson who had made Sumner a 
Senator, and for fifteen years they had fought 
side by side without the shadow of a misunder- 
standing between them. Under such conditions 
men cannot help feeling a strong affection for 
one another. Besides this, Wilson would have 
been influenced by interested motives. Sumner 
cared nothing for the minor Government offices 
— the classified service — except so far as to as- 
sist occasionally some unfortunate person who 
had been crowded out of the regular lines ; and 
this afforded Wilson a fine opportunity of ex- 
tending his influence. If Andrew were chosen 
Senator in the way that was anticipated Wilson 
knew well enough that this patronage would 
have to be divided between them. 

Andrew could not have replaced Sumner in 
the Senate. He lacked the physical strength as 
well as the experience, and that extensive range 



THE WAR GOVERNOR 261 

of legal and historical knowledge which so often 
disconcerted Sumner's opponents. He had a 
genius for the executive, and the right position 
for him would have been in President Grant's 
cabinet. That he would have been offered such 
a place can hardly be doubted. 

But Governor Andrew's span of life was over. 
He might have lived longer if he had taken more 
physical exercise; but the great Civil War 
proved more fatal to the statesmen who were 
engaged in it than to the generals in the field. 
None of the great leaders of the Republican 
party lasted very long after this. 

Andrew's friends always felt that the man 
was greater than his position, and that he really 
missed the opportunity to develop his ability 
to its full extent. His position was not so diffi- 
cult as that of Governor Morgan, of New York, 
or Governor Morton, of Indiana; for he was 
supported by one of the wealthiest and most 
patriotic of the States. It was his clear insight 
into the political problems of his time and the 
fearlessness with which he attacked them that 
gave him such influence among his contem- 
poraries, and made him felt as a moral force to 
the utmost limits of the Union. No public man 
has ever left a more stainless reputation, and 
we only regret that he was not as considerate 
of himself as he was of others. 



THE COLOEED REGIMENTS. 

The first colored regiment in the Civil War 
was organized by General Hunter at Beaufort, 
S. C, in May, 1862, without permission from 
the Government; and some said, perhaps un- 
justly, that he was removed from his command 
on that account. It was reorganized by General 
Saxton the following August, and accepted by 
the Secretary of War a short time afterwards. 
Rev. T. W. Higginson, who had led the attack on 
Boston Court House in the attempt to rescue 
Anthony Burns, was commissioned as its 
Colonel. 

In August also George L. Stearns, being 
aware that Senator Sumner was preparing a 
speech to be delivered at the Republican State 
convention, went to his house on Hancock 
Street and urged that he should advocate in it 
the general enlistment of colored troops; but 
Sumner said decisively, ^'No, I do not consider 
it advisable to agitate that question until the 
Proclamation of Emancipation has become a 
fact. Then we will take another step in ad- 
vance. ' ' At a town meeting held in Medf ord, in 
December, Mr. Stearns made a speech on the 
same subject, and was hissed for his pains by 
the same men who were afterwards saved from 

262 




MAJOR GEORGE L. STEARNS 



THE COLORED REGIMENTS 263 

the conscription of 1863 by the negroes whom 
he recruited. 

Lewis Hayden, the colored janitor of the 
State House, always claimed the credit of hav- 
ing suggested to Governor Andrew to organize 
a colored regiment of Massachusetts Volun- 
teers. William S. Robinson, who was then 
Clerk of the State Senate, supported Hayden 
in this ; but he also remarked that Representa- 
tive Durfee, of New Bedford, proposed a bill 
in May, 1861, for the organization of a colored 
regiment, and that it was only defeated by six 
votes. 

As soon as the Proclamation of Emancipa- 
tion had been issued the Governor went to 
Washington for a personal interview with the 
Secretary of War, and returned with the de- 
sired permission. Mr. Stearns went with him 
and obtained a commission for James Mont- 
gomery, who had defended the Kansas border 
during Buchanan's administration, to be 
Colonel of another colored regiment in South 
Carolina. Colonel Montgomery arrived at 
Beaufort about the first of February. 

Governor Andrew formed the skeleton of a 
regiment with Robert G. Shaw as Colonel, but 
was able to obtain few recruits. There were 
plenty 6f sturdy negroes about Boston, but they 
were earning higher wages than ever before, 
and were equally afraid of what might happen 



264 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

to them if they were captured by the Confeder- 
ate forces. Colonel Hallowell says: ''The 
Governor counselled with certain leading col- 
ored men of Boston. He put the question, 
Will your people enlist in my regiments? 
'They will not,' was the reply of all but Hay- 
den. 'We have no objection to white officers, 
but our self-respect demands that competent 
colored men shall be at least eligible to promo- 
tion. ' " By the last of February less than two 
companies had been recruited, and the pros- 
pects of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts did not 
look hopeful. 

When Governor Andrew was in doubt he usu- 
ally sent for Frank W. Bird and George L. 
Stearns, but this time Mr. Stearns was before 
him. To the Governor's question, "What is to 
done!" he replied, "If you will obtain funds 
from the Legislature for their transportation, 
I will recruit you a regiment among the black 
men of Ohio and Canada West. There are a 
great many runaways in Canada, and those are 
the ones who will go back and fight." "Very 
good," said the Governor; "go as soon as you 
can, and our friend Bird will take care of the 
appropriation bill." A handsome recruiting 
fund for incidental expenses had already been 
raised, to which Mr. Stearns was, as ustial, one 
of the largest subscribers. 

He arrived at Buffalo, New York, the next 



THE COLORED REGIMENTS 265 

day at noon, and went to a colored barber to 
have his hair cut. He disclosed the object of 
his mission, and the barber promised to bring 
some of his friends together to discuss the mat- 
ter that evening. The following evening Mr. 
Stearns called a meeting of the colored resi- 
dents of Buffalo, and made an address to them, 
urging the importance of the occasion, and the 
advantage it would be to their brethren in slav- 
ery and to the future of the negro race, if they 
were to become well-drilled and practiced sol- 
diers. ^'When you have rifles in your hands,'' 
he said, ' ' your freedom will be secure. ' ' To the 
objection that only white officers were being 
commissioned for the colored regiments he re- 
plied: '^See how public opinion changes; how 
rapidly we move forward! Only three months 
ago I was hissed in a town meeting for propos- 
ing the enlistment of colored troops ; and now 
here we are ! I have no doubt that before six 
months a number of colored officers will be 
commissioned." His speech was received with 
applause ; but when he asked, ' ' Now who will 
volunteer?" there was a prolonged silence. At 
length a sturdy-looking fellow arose and said: 
''I would enlist if I felt sure that my wife and 
children would not suffer for it. " ' ' I will look 
after your family, ' ' said Mr. Stearns, ' ' and see 
that they want for nothing; but it is a favor I 
cannot promise again." After this ten or 



266 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

twelve more enrolled themselves, and having 
provided for their maintenance nntil they could 
be transported to the camp at Eeadville, he 
went over to Niagara, on the Canada side, to 
see what might be effected in that vicinity. 

In less than a week he was again in Buffalo 
arranging a recruiting bureau, with agencies in 
Canada and the Western States as far as St. 
Louis — where there were a large number of 
refugees who had lately been liberated by 
Grant's campaign at Vicksburg. Mr. Lucian B. 
Eaton, an old lawyer and prominent politician 
of the city, accepted the agency there as a work 
of patriotic devotion. Among Mr. Stearns's 
most successful agents were the Langston 
brothers, colored scions of a noble Virginia 
family, — both excellent men and influential 
among their people. All his agents were re- 
quired to write a letter to him every evening, 
giving an account of their day's work, and 
every week to send him an account of their ex- 
penses. Thus Mr. Stearns sat at his desk and 
directed their movements by telegraph as easily 
as pieces on a chess-board. The appropriation 
for transportation had already passed the 
Massachusetts Legislature, but where this did 
not suffice to meet an emergency he drew freely 
on his own resources. 

By the last of April recruits were coming in 
at the rate of thirty or forty a day, and Mr. 



THE COLORED REGIMENTS 267 

Stearns telegraphed to the Governor: ^^I can 
fill up another regiment for you in less than six 
weeks," — a hint which resulted in the Massa- 
chusetts Fifty-fifth, with Norwood P. Hallowell, 
a gallant officer who had been wounded at Antie- 
tam, for its commander. 

The Governor, however, appears to have sud- 
denly changed his mind, for on May 7th Mr. 
Stearns wrote to his wife : 

" Yesterday at noon I learned from Governor Andrew 
by telegram that he did not intend to raise another regi- 
ment. I was thunderstruck. My work for three weeks 
would nearly, or quite, fall to the ground. I telegraphed 
in reply : ' You told me to take all the men I could get 
without regard to regiments. Have two hundred men on 
the way; what shall I do with them?' The reply came 
simultaneously with your letter : ' Considering your tele- 
graph and Wild's advice, another regiment may proceed, 
expecting it full in four weeks. Present want of troops 
will probably prevent my being opposed.' I replied : ' I 
thank God for your telegram received this morning. You 
shall have the men in four weeks.' Now all is right." 

The Surgeon-General had detailed one Dr. 
Browne for duty at Buffalo to examine Mr. 
Stearns's recruits, and if found fit for service 
by him there was presumably no need of a sec- 
ond examination. This, however, did not suit 
the medical examiner at Readville, who either 
from ill will or from some unknown motive, in- 
sisted on rejecting every sixth man sent there 



268 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

from the West. Thus there was entailed on Mr. 
Stearns an immense expense which he had no 
funds to meet, and he was obliged to make a 
private loan of ten thousand dollars without 
knowing in the least how or where he was to be 
reimbursed. 

Finally, on May 8, Mr. Stearns made a re- 
monstrance against this abuse to Governor 
Andrew in a letter in which he also gave this 
account of himself : 

" I have worked eveiy day, Sunday included, for more 
than two months and from fourteen to sixteen hours a day ; 
I have filled the West with my agents; I have compelled 
the railroads to accept lower terms of transportation than 
the Government rates; I have filled a letter-book of five 
hundred pages, most of it closely written." 

This letter is now in the archives of the State 
House at Boston, and on the back of it Gover- 
nor Andrew has written : 

" This letter is respy. referred to Surgeon-General Dole 
with the request that he would confer with Surgeon Stone 
and Lieutenant- Colonel Hallo well. It is surprising, and not 
fail' nor fit, that a man trying as Mr. Stearns is, to serve 
the country at a risk, should suffer thus by such disagree- 
ment of opinion. 

" John A. Andrew." 

Shortly after this Mr. Stearns returned to 
Boston for a brief visit, and was met in the 
street by a philanthropic lady, Mrs. E. D. 



THE COLORED REGIMENTS 269 

Cheney, who asked : ''Where have yon been all 
this time, Mr. Stearns I I supposed yon were 
going to help us organize the colored regiment? 
You will be glad to know that it is doing well. 
We have nearly a thousand men. ' ' Mr. Stearns 
made no reply, but bowed and passed on. This 
is the more surprising, as Mrs. Cheney was 
president of a society of ladies who had pre- 
sented the Fifty- fourth Regiment with a flag; 
but the fault would seem to have been more that 
of others than her own. At the celebration 
which took place on the departure of the regi- 
ment for South Carolina, however, Wendell 
Phillips said: ''We owe it chiefly to a private 
citizen, to George L. Stearns, of Medford, that 
these heroic men are mustered into the ser- 
vice, '' — a statement which astonished a good 
many.* 

The Governors of the Western States had 
never considered their colored population as of 
any importance, but now, when it was being 
drained off to fill up the quota of Massachusetts 
troops they began to think differently. The 
Governor of Ohio advised Governor Andrew 
that no more recruiting could be permitted in 
his State unless the recruits were assigned to 

* The statement made by Governor Andrew's private sec- 
retary concerning the colored regiments in his memoir of 
the Governor would seem to have been intentionally mis- 
leading. 



270 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

the Ohio quota. Andrew replied that the Gov- 
ernor of Ohio was at liberty to recruit colored 
regiments of his own; but the Massachusetts 
Fifty-fifth, having now a complement, it was de- 
cided not to continue the business any further, 
and Mr. Stearns's labors at Buffalo were thus 
brought to an end about the middle of June. He 
had recruited fully one-half of the Fifty-fourth, 
and nearly the whole of the Fifty-fifth regi- 
ments. 

He now conceived the idea of making his re- 
cruiting bureau serviceable by placing it in the 
hands of the Government. He therefore went to 
Washington and meeting his friend, Mr. Fred 
Law Olmstead, at Willard's Hotel, the latter 
offered to go with him to the War Department 
and introduce him to Secretary Stanton. They 
found Stanton fully alive to the occasion, and 
in reply to Mr. Stearns 's offer he said : 

" I have heard of your recruiting bureau, and I think 
you would be the best man to run the machine you have con- 
structed. I will make you an Assistant Adjutant-General 
with the rank of Major, and I will give you authority to 
recruit colored regiments all over the country." 

Stearns thanked him, and replied that there was 
nothing which he had so much at heart as en- 
listing the black men on a large scale; for no 
people could be said to be secure in their free- 
dom unless they were also soldiers ; but his wife 



THE COLORED REGIMENTS 271 

was unwell, and had suffered much from his 
absence already, and he did not feel that he 
ought to accept the offer without her consent. 
In answer to the question how funds for re- 
cruiting were to be obtained without any ap- 
propriation by Congress, Mr. Stanton said 
they could be supplied from the Secret Ser- 
vice fund. 

When Mr. Stearns and Mr. Olmstead were 
alone on the street again, the latter said: **Mr. 
Stearns, go to your room and sleep if you can. ' ' 

Having returned to Boston, to arrange his 
affairs for a prolonged absence, and having ob- 
tained his wife's consent, Mr. Stearns ordered 
his recruiting bureau to report at Philadelphia, 
where he soon after followed it. 

The battle of Gettysburg had stirred Phila- 
delphia to its foundations, and its citizens were 
prepared to welcome anything that promised a 
vigorous prosecution of the war. Major 
Stearns was at once enrolled among the mem- 
bers of the Union League Club, the parent of 
all the union leagues in the country, and was 
invited to the meetings of various other clubs 
and fashionable entertainments. A recruiting 
committee was formed from among the most 
prominent men in the city. Camp William 
Penn, while the colored regiment was being 
drilled, became a fashionable resort, and fine 
' equipages filled the road thither every after- 



272 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

noon. By the middle of July the first regiment 
was nearly full. 

Fine weather does not often last more than a 
few weeks at a time, and in the midst of these 
festivities suddenly came Secretary Stanton's 
order reducing the pay of colored soldiers from 
thirteen to eight dollars a month. This was a 
breach of contract and the men had a right to 
their discharge if they wished it; but that, of 
course, was not permitted them. Such an action 
could only be excused on the ground of extreme 
necessity. The Massachusetts Legislature 
promptly voted to pay the deficiency to the 
Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth regiments ; but the 
one at Philadelphia was in organization, and 
Mr. Stearns found himself in the position of a 
man who has made promises which he is unable 
to fulfil. 

Hon. William D. Kelley and two other gentle- 
men of the committee went with Major Stearns 
to Washington to see Stanton, and endeavored 
to persuade him to revoke the order. Kelley 
was one of the most persistent debaters who 
ever sat in Congress, and he argued the ques- 
tion with the Secretary of War for more than 
an hour, — to the great disgust of the latter, — 
but Stanton was as firm as Napoleon ever was. 
Major Stearns never had another pleasant in- 
terview with him. 

The Secretary's argument was that some 



THE COLORED REGIMENTS 273 

white regiments had complained of being placed 
on an equality with negroes, and that it inter- 
fered with recruiting white soldiers. There was 
doubtless some reason in this ; but the same re- 
sult might have been obtained by a smaller 
reduction. 

The next morning some one remarked to 
Major Stearns that it was exceedingly hot 
weather, even for "Washington, and his reply 
was : ^^ Yes, but the fever within is worse than 
the heat without.'' He talked of resigning; 
but finally said, decisively, ^'I will go and con- 
sult with Olmstead.'' 

He found Mr. Olmstead friendly and sympa- 
thetic. He spoke of Secretary Stanton in no 
complimentary terms, but he advised Mr. 
Stearns to continue with his work, and endure 
all that he could for the good of the cause, — not 
to be worried by evils for which he was in no 
way responsible. Mr. Stearns returned to Wil- 
lard's with a more cheerful countenance. 

In the afternoon Judge Kelley came in with 
the news of the repulse of the Fifty-fourth 
Massachusetts regiment at Fort Wagner and 
the death of Colonel Shaw. 

There was a colored regiment in process of 
formation at Baltimore, and another was sup- 
posed to be organizing at Fortress Monroe. 
Both were nominally under Mr. Stearns's su- 
pervision, and he inspected the former on his 

18 



274 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

return trip to Philadelphia, and sent his son to 
investigate and report on the latter. Not the 
trace of a colored regiment conld be discovered 
at Fortress Monroe, but there were scores of 
Union officers lounging and smoking on the 
piazza of the Hygeia Hotel. Mr. Stearns 
thought that business economy had better begin 
by reducing the number of officers rather than 
the pay of the soldiers. 

On July 28 Major Stearns wrote from Bal- 
timore : 

" I am still perplexed as to the mode in which I can best 
carry out the work intrusted to me. It is so difficult to ad- 
just my mode of rapid working to the slow routine of the 
Department that I sometimes almost despair of the task and 
want to abandon it." 

No private business could succeed if carried 
on after the manner of the National Govern- 
ment at that time, and this was not the fault of 
Lincoln's administration at all, but of the whole 
course of Jackson democracy from 1829 to 1861. 
The clerks in the various departments did not 
hold their positions from the heads of those 
departments, but from outside politicians who 
had no connection with the Government busi- 
ness, and as a consequence they were saucy and 
insubordinate. They found it to their interest 
to delay and obstruct the procedure of business 
in order to give the impression that they were 
overworked^ and in that way make their posi- 



THE COLORED REGIMENTS 275 

tions more secure and if possible of greater 
importance. 

Major Stearns had found himself continually 
embarrassed in his Government service from 
lack of sufficient funds, and the continual delay 
in having his accounts audited. The auditors 
of the War Department repeatedly took excep- 
tion to expenditures that were absolutely neces- 
sary, and he was obliged to advance large sums 
from his own capital in order to provide the 
current expenses of his agents. In this emer- 
gency he returned to Boston and held a confer- 
ence with Mr. John M. Forbes and other 
friends; and they all agreed that he ought to 
be better supported in the work of recruiting 
than he had been. A subscription was imme- 
diately set on foot, and in a few days a recruit- 
ing fund of about thirty thousand dollars was 
raised and placed in charge of Mr. R. P. Hal- 
lowell. 

On September 1, Secretary Stanton trans- 
ferred Major Stearns to Nashville, where he 
could obtain recruits in large numbers, not only 
from Tennessee but from the adjoining States. 
Fugitives flocked to his standard from Ala- 
bama, Mississippi, and Kentucky. For the suc- 
ceeding five months he organized colored regi- 
ments so rapidly that it was with difficulty the 
General commanding at Nashville could supply 
the necessary quota of officers for them. His 



276 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

letter-writing alone rarely came to less than 
twenty pages a day, and besides this he was 
obliged to attend personally to innnmerable de- 
tails which were constantly interfering with 
more important affairs. Serious questions con- 
cerning the rights and legal position of the 
freedmen were continually arising, and these 
required a cool head and a clear understanding 
for their solution. 

Edward J. Bartlett, of Concord, who was one 
of his staff in Nashville, stated afterwards that 
he never saw a man who could despatch so 
much business in a day as George L. Stearns. 
He says: 

" I shall never forget the fine appearance of the first 
regiment we sent off. They were all picked men, and felt 
a just pride in wearing the blue. As fast as we obtained 
enough recruits they were formed into regiments, officered 
and sent to the front. When men became scarce in the 
city we made trips into the country, often going beyond 
the Union picket line, and generally reaping a harvest of 
slaves. These expeditions brought an element of danger 
into our lives, for our forage parties were fired into by the 
enemy more than once, but we always succeeded in bring- 
ing back our men with us. The black regiments did valua- 
ble service for the Union, leaving their dead on many a 
southern battle-field. Mr. Stearns was a noble man, cour- 
teous, with great executive ability, and grandly fitted for 
the work he was engaged in." 

At this time Major Stearns's friend. General 
Wilde, was recruiting a colored brigade in 



THE COLORED REGIMENTS 277 

North Carolina, and General Ullman was or- 
ganizing colored regiments in Louisiana. 

Major Stearns's labors were brought to a 
close in February, 1864, by the eccentric con- 
duct of Secretary Stanton, — the reason for 
which has never been explained. He obtained 
leave of absence to return to Boston at Christ- 
mas time, and after a brief visit to his family 
went to Washington and called upon the Secre- 
tary of War, who declined to see him three days 
in succession. On the evening of the fourth day 
he met Mr. Stanton at an evening party and 
Stanton said to him in his roughest manner: 
*' Major Stearns, why are you not in Tennes- 
see?" This was a breach of official etiquette 
on the part of the Secretary of War and Major 
Stearns sent in his resignation at once. His 
reason for doing so, however, was not so much 
on account of this personal slight as from the 
conclusion that he had accomplished all that 
was essential to be done in this line. His chief 
assistant at Nashville, Capt. R. D. Muzzey, was 
an able man and perfectly competent to run the 
machine which Mr. Stearns had constructed. 

The importance of his work cannot readily 
be measured. It was no longer easy to obtain 
white volunteers. With a population ten mil- 
lions less than that of France, the Northern 
States were maintaining an army much larger 
than the one which accompanied Napoleon to 



278 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

Moscow. General Thomas's right wing, at the 
battle of Nashville, was formed almost entirely 
of colored regiments. They were ordered to 
make a feint attack on the enemy, so as to with- 
draw attention from the flanking movement of 
his veterans on the left; but when the charge 
had once begun their officers were unable to 
keep them in check — the feint was changed into 
a real attack and contributed largely to the most 
decisive victory of the whole war. 

In his last annual Message President Lincoln 
congratulated Congress on the success of the 
Government's policy in raising negro regi- 
ments, and on the efficiency of the troops or- 
ganized in this way. It seems very doubtful if 
the war could have been brought to a successful 
termination without them. 

In 1898 the Legislature of Massachusetts, at 
the instance of the veterans of the Fifty-fourth 
and Fifty-fifth regiments, voted to have a 
memorial tablet for the public services of 
George Luther Stearns set up in the Doric Hall 
of Boston State House, and the act was ap- 
proved by Governor Walcott, who sent the quill 
with which he signed it to Major Stearns's 
widow. 



EMERSON'S TRIBUTE 

TO GEOEGE L. STEAKNS. 

Delivered in the First Parish Church of Medford on the 
Sunday following Major Stearns^s death, April 9, 1867. 

^ ^ We do not know how to prize good men until 
they depart. High virtue has such an air of 
nature and necessity that to thank its possessor 
would be to praise the water for flowing or the 
fire for warming us. But, on the instant of 
their death, we wonder at our past insensibility, 
when we see how impossible it is to replace 
them. There will be other good men, but not 
these again. And the painful surprise which 
the last week brought us, in the tidings of the 
death of Mr. Stearns, opened all eyes to the 
just consideration of the singular merits of 
the citizen, the neighbor, the friend, the father, 
and the husband, whom this assembly mourns. 
We recall the all but exclusive devotion of 
this excellent man during the last twelve 
years to public and patriotic interests. Known 
until that time in no very wide circle as a man 
of skill and perseverance in his business ; of 
pure life; of retiring and affectionate habits; 

279 



280 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

happy in his domestic relations, — his extreme 
interest in the national politics, then growing 
more anxious year by year, engaged him to 
scan the fortunes of freedom with keener atten- 
tion. He was an early laborer in the resistance 
to slavery. This brought him into sympathy 
with the people of Kansas. As early as 1855 
the Emigrant Aid Society was formed; and in 
1856 he organized the Massachusetts State 
Kansas Committee, by means of which a large 
amount of money was obtained for the 'free- 
State men,' at times of the greatest need. 
He was the more engaged to this cause by 
making in 1857 the acquaintance of Captain 
John Brown, who was not only an extraordi- 
nary man, but one who had a rare magnetism 
for men of character, and attached some of the 
best and noblest to him, on very short acquaint- 
ance, by lasting ties. Mr. Stearns made him- 
self at once necessary to Captain Brown as one 
who respected his inspirations, and had the 
magnanimity to trust him entirely, and to arm 
his hands with all needed help. 

''For the relief of Kansas, in 1856-57, his 
own contributions were the largest and the first. 
He never asked any one to give so much as he 
himself gave, and his interest was so manifestlj^ 
pure and sincere that he easily obtained eager 
offerings in quarters where other petitioners 
failed. He did not hesitate to become the 



EMERSON'S TRIBUTE 281 

banker of his clients, and to furnish them money 
and arms in advance of the subscriptions which 
he obtained. His first donations were only 
entering wedges of his later ; and, unlike other 
benefactors, he did not give money to excuse 
his entire preoccupation in his own pursuits, 
but as an earnest of the dedication of his heart 
and hand to the interests of the sufferers, — a 
pledge kept until the success he wrought and 
prayed for was consummated. In 1862, on the 
President's first or preliminary Proclamation 
of Emancipation, he took the first steps for 
organizing the Freedman's Bureau, — a depart- 
ment which has since grown to great propor- 
tions. In 1863, he began to recruit colored sol- 
diers in Buffalo; then at Philadelphia and 
Nashville. But these were only parts of his 
work. He passed his time in incessant consul- 
tations with all men whom he could reach, to 
suggest and urge the measures needed for the 
hour. And there are few men of real or sup- 
posed influence. North or South, with whom he 
has not at some time communicated. Every im- 
portant patriotic measure in this region has 
had his sympathy, and of many he has been 
the prime mover. Pie gave to each his strong 
support, but uniformly shunned to appear in 
public. For himself or his friends he asked no 
reward: for himself, he asked only to do the 
hard work. His transparent singleness of pur- 



282 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

pose, his freedom from all by-ends, his plain 
good sense, courage, adherence, and his roman- 
tic generosity disarmed first or last all gain- 
sayers. His examination before the United 
States Senate Committee on the Harper's 
Ferry Invasion, in January, 1860, as reported 
in the public documents, is a chapter well worth 
reading, as a shining example of the manner 
in which a truth-speaker baffles all statecraft, 
and extorts at last a reluctant homage from the 
bitterest adversaries. 

^'I have heard, what must be true, that he 
had great executive skill, a clear method, and a 
just attention to all the details of the task in 
hand. Plainly he was no boaster or pretender, 
but a man for up-hill work, a soldier to bide the 
brunt ; a man whom disasters, which dishearten 
other men, only stimulated to new courage and 
endeavor. 

' ' I have heard something of his quick temper : 
that he was indignant at this or that man's 
behavior, but never that his anger outlasted for 
a moment the mischief done or threatened to 
the good cause, or ever stood in the way of his 
hearty co-operation with the offenders, when 
they returned to the path of public duty. I look 
upon him as a type of the American republican. 
A man of the people, in strictly private life, girt 
with family ties ; an active and intelligent man- 
ufacturer and merchant, enlightened enough to 



EMERSON'S TRIBUTE 283 

see a citizen's interest in the public affairs, and 
virtuous enough to obey to the uttermost the 
truth he saw, — he became, in the most natural 
manner, an indispensable power in the State. 
Without such vital support as he, and such as 
he, brought to the government, where would 
that government be 1 When one remembers his 
incessant service; his journeys and residences 
in many States ; the societies he worked with ; 
the councils in which he sat; the wide corre- 
spondence, presently enlarged by printed circu- 
lars, then by newspapers established wholly or 
partly at his own cost ; the useful suggestions ; 
the celerity with which his purpose took form; 
and his immovable convictions, — I think this 
single will was worth to the cause ten thousand 
ordinary partisans, well-disposed enough, but 
of feebler and interrupted action. 

'^ These interests, which he passionately 
adopted, inevitably led him into personal com- 
munication with patriotic persons holding the 
same views, — with two Presidents, with mem- 
bers of Congress, with officers of the govern- 
ment and of the army, and with leading people 
everywhere. He had been always a man of sim- 
ple tastes, and through all his years devoted 
to the growing details of his prospering manu- 
factory. But this sudden association now with 
the leaders of parties and persons of pro- 
nounced power and influence in the nation, and 



284 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

the broad hospitality which brought them about 
his board at his own house, or in New York, or 
in Washington, never altered one feature of his 
face, one trait in his manners. There he sat in 
the council, a simple, resolute Republican, an 
enthusiast only in his love of freedom and the 
good of men; with no pride of opinion, and 
with this distinction, that, if he could not bring 
his associates to adopt his measure, he accepted 
with entire sweetness the next best measure 
which could secure their assent. But these pub- 
lic benefits were purchased at a severe cost. 
For a year or two, the most affectionate and 
domestic of men became almost a stranger in 
his beautiful home. And it was too plain that 
the excessive toil and anxieties into which his 
ardent spirit led him overtasked his strength 
and wore out prematurely his constitution. It 
is sad that such a life should end prematurely ; 
but when I consider that he lived long enough 
to see with his own eyes the salvation of his 
country, to which he had given all his heart; 
that he did not know an idle day; was never 
called to sufPer under the decays and loss of his 
powers, or to see that others were waiting for 
his place and privilege, but lived while he lived, 
and beheld his work prosper for the joy and 
benefit of all mankind, — I count him happy 
among men. 

^^ Almost I am ready to say to these mourners, 



EMERSON'S TRIBUTE 285 

Be not too proud in your grief, when you re- 
member that there is not a town in the remote 
State of Kansas that will not weep with you as 
at the loss of its founder ; not a Southern State 
in which the freedmen will not learn to-day 
from their preachers that one of their most effi- 
cient benefactors has departed, and will cover 
his memory with benedictions ; and that, after 
all his efforts to serve men without appearing 
to do so, there is hardly a man in this country 
worth knowing who does not hold his name in 
exceptional honor. And there is to my mind 
somewhat so absolute in the action of a good 
man, that we do not, in thinking of him, so 
much as make any question of the future. For 
the Spirit of the Universe seems to say: ^He 
has done well ; is not that saying all ! ' " 

This monograph was printed in the Boston Common- 
wealth, April 20, 1867, and has never been republished. It 
is exceptional in Emerson's writings as the account of a 
man with whom he was personally and intimately ac- 
quainted. 



ELIZUR WRIGHT 

The influence of Ohio in the United States of 
America during the past half century may be 
compared to that of Virginia during the first 
forty years of the Republic. All of our Presi- 
dents, elected as such since 1860, have come 
from Ohio, or adjacent territory. Cleveland 
came from beyond the Alleghenies, and Lincoln 
was born on the southern side of the Ohio River. 
General Grant and General Sherman came from 
Ohio; and so did Salmon P. Chase, and John 
Brown, of Harper's Ferry celebrity. Chase 
gave the country the inestimable blessing of a 
national currency; and even the Virginians 
admitted that John Brown was a very remark- 
able person. 

The fathers of these men conquered the wil- 
derness and brought up their sons to a sturdy, 
vigorous manliness, which resembles the colo- 
nial culture of Franklin, Adams, and Wash- 
ington. 

Sitting in the same school-house with John 
Brown, in 1816, was a boy named Elizur Wright 
who, like Brown, came from Connecticut, and 
to whom the people of this country are also 
somewhat under obligation. Every widow and 
orphan in the United States who receives the 

286 



f% 




ELIZUR WRIGHT 



ELIZUR WRIGHT 287 

benefit of a life-insurance policy owes a blessing 
to Elizur Wright, who was the first to establish 
life insurance in America on a strong founda- 
tion, and whose reports on that subject, made 
during his long term as Insurance Commis- 
sioner for Massachusetts, have formed a sort 
of constitution by which the policy of all life- 
insurance companies is still guided. His name 
deserves a place beside those of Horace Mann 
and William Lloyd Garrison. 

Apart from this, his biography is one of the 
most interesting, one of the most picturesque, 
when compared with those of the many brilliant 
men of his time. His grandfather was a sea 
captain, and his father, who was also named 
Elizur, was a farmer in Canaan, Connecticut. 
His mother's name was Clarissa Richards, and 
he was born on the twelfth of February, 1804. 
In the spring of 1810 the family moved to Tal- 
mage, Ohio, making the journey in a two-horse 
carriage with an ox-team to transport their 
household goods. Their progress was neces- 
sarily slow, and it was nearly six weeks before 
they reached Talmage, as it was generally 
necessary to camp at night by the way-side. 
This romantic journey, the building of their 
log-cabin, the clearing of the forest, and above 
all his solitary watches in the maple-orchard 
(where he might perhaps be attacked by 
wolves), made a deep poetic impression on 



288 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

young Elizur, and furnished him with a store 
of pleasant memories in after life. 

They lived at first in a log-cabin, and after- 
wards his father built a square frame-house 
with a piazza and veranda in front, which is 
still standing. The school where Elizur, Jr., 
met John Brown was at a long distance for a 
boy to walk. He does not appear to have made 
friends with John, remarkably alike as they 
were in veracity, earnestness, and adherence to 
principle; but John was somewhat the elder, 
and two or three years among boys counts for 
more than ten among grown people. In later 
life, however, Mr. Wright told an interesting 
anecdote of young Brown, which runs as fol- 
lows : 

John was the best-behaved boy in the school, 
and for this reason the teacher selected him to 
occupy a vacant place beside the girls. Some 
other boys were jealous of this, and after call- 
ing Brown a milk-sop, attacked him with snow- 
balls. John proved himself as good a fighter 
then as he did afterwards at Black Jack. He 
made two or three snow-balls, rushed in at close 
quarters, and fought with such energy that he 
finally drove all the boys before him. 

Elizur Wright may have taken note of this 
affair, and it served him when he entered Yale 
College in 1822. He had never heard of hazing, 
and when the Sophomores came to his room to 



ELIZUR WRIGHT 289 

tease him, lie received them with true Western 
cordiality. He found out his mistake quickly 
enough, and at the first insult he rose in wrath 
and ordered them out with such furious looks 
that they concluded it was best to go. 

He helped to support himself during his col- 
lege course not only by teaching in winter, but 
by making fires, waiting on table, and ringing 
the recitation bell. In spite of these menial 
services, he was popular in his class and had 
a number of aristocratic friends, — among them 
Philip Van Rensselaer. He was one of the best 
scholars in his class, — first in mathematics, and 
so fluent in Greek that to the end of his life he 
could read it with ease. 

He did not wait for graduation. In May, 
1826, the Groton Academy suddenly wanted a 
teacher, and Elizur Wright was invited to take 
the position. The college faculty sent him his 
degree a month later, — which they might not 
have done if they had known how little he 
cared for it. In his school at Groton was a 
pretty, dark-eyed girl named Susan Clark, who, 
for two years previously, had been at school 
with Margaret Fuller and was very well ac- 
quainted with her. Elizur Wright became inter- 
ested in Miss Clark, and three years later they 
were married. 

One day, while he was living at Groton, Mr. 
Wright went by the Boston stage to Fitchburg, 

19 



290 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

and on his return held a long conversation with 
a fellow-passenger, a tall, slender young man 
with aquiline features, who gave his name as 
Ralph Waldo Emerson. Mr. Wright found him 
an exceedingly interesting gentleman, but of so 
fragile an appearance that it seemed impossible 
that he should live many years. 

From this time the paths of these two young 
scholars diverged. Emerson became an idealist 
and an ethical reformer. Elizur Wright became 
a realist and a political reformer. Realism 
seems to belong to the soil of Ohio. 

Ill health came next in turn, a natural conse- 
quence of his severe life at Yale College. He 
was obliged to leave his school, and for an occu- 
pation he circulated tracts for the American 
Congregational Society, making a stipulation, 
however, which was characteristic of him, that 
he should not distribute any that ran contrary 
to his convictions. In this itinerant fashion he 
became sufficiently recuperated at the end of a 
year to marry Miss Clark, September 13, 1829, 
and accept the professorship of mathematics at 
Western Reserve College, at Hudson, Ohio. 
There he remained till 1833, strengthening him- 
self in the repose of matrimony for the conflict 
that lay before him, — a conflict that every jus- 
tice-loving man feels that he will have to face at 
one time or another. 

This probably came sooner than he expected. 



ELIZUR WRIGHT 291 

Some anti-slavery tracts, circulated by Grarri- 
son, reached Western Eeserve College and set 
the place in a ferment. Elizur Wright became 
the champion of the anti-slavery movement, not 
only in the town of Hudson but throughout the 
State. What Garrison was in New England he 
became in the West. In the spring of 1833 he 
resigned his professorship and spent the next 
^ve months delivering lectures on the slavery 
question. In December of the same year the 
first national anti-slavery convention met in 
Philadelphia, and Elizur Wright was unani- 
mously chosen secretar}^ of it. After that he 
went to New York to edit a newspaper, the 
Anti-Slavery Reporter, remaining until 1839. 
During the pro-slavery riot in New York he 
was attacked on the sidewalk by two men with 
knives, but instantly rescued by some teamsters 
who were passing. When he reached his home 
in Brooklyn he found a note from the Mayor 
advising him to leave the city for some days; 
to which he replied advising the Mayor to stop 
the New York ferry-boats. Meanwhile, as Mrs. 
Wright was too ill to be removed, he purchased 
an axe and prepared to defend his house to the 
last extremity. The Mayor, however, adopted 
his advice, and by this excellent stratagem 
Brooklyn was saved from the fury of the mob. 
In 1837 he moved to Dorchester, Massachu- 
setts, to prosecute a similar work in Boston. 



292 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

Nothing is more remarkable in Mr. Wright's 
life than his perfect self-poise and peace of 
mind during snch a long period of external 
agitation. It is donbtful, in spite of his highly 
nervous temperament, if he ever lost a night's 
sleep. When he was editing the Chronotype, 
and waiting for the telegraphic news to arrive, 
he would sometimes lie down on a pile of news- 
papers and go to sleep in less than half a minute. 
For mental relaxation he studied the higher 
mathematics and wrote poetry — much of it very 
good. His faith in Divine Providence was abso- 
lute. He had the soul of a hero. 

During his first years in Boston, Elizur 
Wright translated La Fontaine's Fables into 
English verse, — one of the best metrical ver- 
sions of a foreign poet, — and it is much to be 
regretted that the book is out of print. It did 
not sell, of course, and Elizur Wright, deter- 
mined that neither he nor the publisher should 
lose money on it, undertook to sell it himself. 
In carrying out this plan he met with some 
curious experiences. He called on Professor 
Ticknor, who received him kindly, spoke well 
of his translation, offered to dispose of a num- 
ber of copies, but — advised him to keep clear of 
the slavery question. 

He went to Washington with the twofold 
object of selling his book and talking emancipa- 
tion to our national legislators; and he sue- 



ELIZUR WRIGHT 293 

ceeded in both attempts, for there were few men 
who liked to argue with Elizur Wright. His 
brain was a store-house of facts and his analy- 
sis of them equally keen and cutting. One Con- 
gressman, a very gentlemanly Virginian, said 
to him: ''Mr. Wright, I wish you could go 
across the Potomac and look over my district. 
I think you will find that African slavery is not 
half as bad as it is represented." Elizur 
Wright went and returned with the emphatic 
reply : ' ' I find it much worse than I expected. ' ' 
Having disposed of more than half of his 
edition in this manner, in the spring of 1842 
he went to England, and with the kind assist- 
ance of Browning and Pringle succeeded in 
placing the rest of his books there to his satis- 
faction. Having a great admiration for Words- 
worth 's poetry, he made a long journey to see 
that celebrated author, but only to be affronted 
by Wordsworth's saying that America would 
be a good place if there were only a few gentle- 
men in it. With Carlyle he had, as might have 
been expected, a furious argument on the 
slavery question, and ''King Thomas," as Dr. 
Holmes calls him, encountered for once a head 
as hard as his own. The Brownings, Robert 
and Elizabeth, received him with true English 
hospitality. More experienced than Words- 
worth in the great world, they recognized Elizur 
Wright to be what he was, — a man of intellect 



294 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

and rare integrity. Mr. Wright always spoke 
of Browning as one of the most satisfactory 
men with whom he had ever conversed. 

In 1840, as is well known, the anti-slavery 
movement became divided into those who still 
believed in the efficacy of ^' moral suasion" and 
those who considered that the time had come 
for introducing the question into practical poli- 
tics. The Texas question made the latter course 
inevitable, and Elizur Wright concluded that 
moral suasion had done its work. As he ex- 
pressed it, in a letter to Mrs. Maria Chapman : 
''Garrison has already left his enemies thrice 
dead behind him." He was a delegate to the 
convention of April 1, 1840, which nominated 
James G. Birney for the Presidency, and took 
an active share in the Free-soil movement of 
1844, — a movement which produced exactly the 
opposite effect from that which was intended; 
for the defeat of Henry Clay opened the door 
for the Mexican war and the annexation of a 
much larger territory than Texas. If Clay had 
been elected, the history of the United States 
must have been different from what it has 
proved. 

How Elizur Wright supported his family dur- 
ing this long period of philanthropy will always 
be a mystery, but support them he did. He had 
no regular salary like Garrison, but, in an emer- 
gency, he could turn his hand to almost any- 



ELIZUR WRIGHT 295 

thing, and earn money by odd jobs. Fortu- 
nately, lie had a wife who was not afraid of any 
kind of house-work. He purchased his clothes 
of a tailor named Curtis, who kept a sailors' 
clothing store on North Street, and his mode 
of living otherwise was not less economical. 
That his children suffered by their father's phi- 
lanthropy must be admitted, but it is a general 
rule that the families of public benefactors also 
contribute largely to the general good. His 
eldest daughters inherited their father's intel- 
lect, and as they grew up cheerfully assisted 
him in various ways. 

When the Mexican war began there was great 
indignation over it in New England, and Lowell 
wrote his most spirited verses in opposition to 
it. Elizur Wright took advantage of the storm 
to establish a newspaper, the Chronotype, in 
opposition to the Government policy. He began 
this enterprise almost without help, but soon 
obtained assistance from leading Free-soilers 
like John A. Andrew, Dr. S. G. Howe, and 
especially Frank W. Bird, the most disinter- 
ested of politicians, who gave several thousand 
dollars in support of the Chronotype. The ob- 
ject of the paper, stated in Mr. Wright's own 
words, was ''To examine everything that is 
new and some things that are old, without fear 
or favor ; to promote good nature, good neigh- 
borhood, and good government; to advocate a 



296 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

just distribution of the proper reward, whether 
material or immaterial, both of honest labor 
and rascally violence, cunning and idleness; 
last, but not least, to get an honest living. ' ' In 
1848 he had a list of six thousand subscribers ; 
and his incisive pen was greatly feared. The 
Post, which was the Government organ in Bos- 
ton, attacked him once, but met with such a 
crushing rejoinder that its editor concluded not 
to try that game again. His capacity for brain 
labor was wonderful. He could work fourteen 
hours a day, and did not seem to need recrea- 
tion at all. 

In the campaign of 1844 Elizur Wright made 
a number of speeches for the Free-soil candi- 
date in various New England cities. One morn- 
ing he was returning from a celebration at 
Nashua, when at the Lowell station Daniel 
Webster entered the train with two or three 
friends, and turned over the seat next to Mr. 
Wright. A newsboy followed Webster, and 
they all purchased papers. Elizur Wright 
purchased a Whig paper, and seeing a state- 
ment in it concerning the Free-soil candidate 
which he believed from internal evidence to be 
untrue, he said quite loud: ''Well! this is the 
finest roorback I have met with." Webster 
inquired what it was, and, after looking at 
the statement, pronounced it genuine. A short 
argument ensued, which closed with Webster's 



ELIZUR WRIGHT 297 

proposing to bet forty pounds that the allega- 
tion was true. ''I am not a betting man," re- 
plied Wright, ^'but since the honor of my can- 
didate is at stake, I accept your wager. ' ' Web- 
ster then gave him his card, and Wright re- 
turned it by writing his name on a piece of the 
newspaper. 

Elizur Wright no sooner reached his office 
than he found letters and documents there 
disproving the Whig statement in toto, and 
later in the day he carried them over to Mr. 
Webster, who had an office in what was then 
Niles's Block. Mr. Webster looked carefully 
through them, congratulated Mr. Wright on 
his good fortune, and handed him two hun- 
dred-dollar bills. Peter Harvey, who was in 
Webster ^s office at the time, afterwards 
stopped Elizur Wright on the sidewalk and 
said to him: ''Mr. Wright, you could have 
afforded to lose that wager much better than 
Webster could.'' 

It is remarkable how all the different inter- 
ests in this man's life — ^mathematics, philan- 
thropy, journalism, and the translation of La 
Fontaine — united together like so many differ- 
ent currents to further the grand achievement 
of his life. While in England he had taken 
notice of the life-insurance companies there, 
which were in a more advanced stage than those 
in America. They interested him as a mathe- 



298 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

matical study, and also from the humanitarian 
point of view. He purchased ' ' David Jones on 
Annuities," and the best works on life in- 
surance. These he read with the same ardor 
with which young ladies devour an exciting 
novel, and without the least expectation that 
they might ever bring dollars and cents to him ; 
until one day in the spring of 1852 an insurance 
solicitor placed an advertising booklet in his 
hand as he was entering the office of the 
Chronotype. 

Elizur Wright looked it over and perceived 
quickly enough that no company could under- 
take to do what this . one pretended to and re- 
main solvent. The booklet served him for an 
editorial, and before one o'clock the next day 
agents from every life company in Boston were 
collected in his office. They supposed at first 
that it was an attempt at blackmail, but soon 
discovered that Elizur Wright knew more about 
the subject than any of them. Neither threats 
nor persuasions had any effect on this uncom- 
promising backwoodsman. Only on one condi- 
tion would Mr. Wright retract his statements, — 
that the companies should reform their circu- 
lars and place their affairs in a more sound 
condition. The consequence of this was an in- 
vitation from the presidents of several of the 
companies for Mr. Wright to call at their offices 
and discuss the subject with them. 



ELIZUR WRIGHT 299 

The situation was this, and Mr. Wright saw 
it clearly : the presidents of the companies were 
excellent men, — as honorable and trustworthy 
as the presidents of our best national banks, — 
and they knew how to organize and conduct 
their companies in all business matters, but of 
life insurance as a science they knew as little 
as they knew of Greek. I-n those days there was 
a prejudice against college graduates which 
prevented their obtaining the highest mercan- 
tile positions, and it is doubtful if there was 
any person connected with the life-insurance 
companies who could solve a problem in the 
higher mathematics. The consequence of this 
was that it placed the presidents quite at the 
mercy of their own accountants. Recent events 
have proved with what facility the teller of a 
bank can abstract twenty or thirty thousand 
dollars without its appearing in the accounts. 
' Temptations and opportunities of this sort must 
have been much greater in life-insurance com- 
panies, as they were formerly conducted, than 
it is now in banks. Money may have been stolen 
without its having been discovered. 

Besides this, the temptations of the companies 
to continually over-bid one another for public 
favor was another evil which, sooner or later, 
would lead some of them into bankruptcy. This 
danger could only be averted by placing their 
rates of insurance on a scientific basis, which 



300 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

should be the same and unalterable for all com- 
panies. 

The charters of the companies had been 
drafted in the interest of the management, 
without much consideration for the rights or 
advantages of those who were insured. There 
were no laws on the statute book which would 
practically prevent directors of life-insurance 
companies from doing as they pleased with 
the immense trust properties in their posses- 
sion. 

After two or three interviews with Elizur 
Wright the presidents of the companies came 
to the conclusion that he was exactly the man 
that they wanted, and they commissioned him 
to draw up a revised set of tables and rates 
which could serve them for a uniform standard. 
This work occupied him and two of his daugh- 
ters for a full year, for which he was compen- 
sated with the paltry sum of two thousand dol- 
lars. The time was fast approaching, however, 
when Elizur Wright would be in a position to 
dictate his own terms to the insurance com- 
panies. 

It was now that the Bird Club, the most dis- 
tinguished political club of its time, became 
gradually formed out of the leading elements 
of the Free-soil party. At one time this club 
counted among its members two Senators, three 
Governors, and a number of Congressmen, and 



ELIZUR WRIGHT 301 

it was a power in the land. Elizur Wright's 
services as editor of the Chronotype gave him 
an early entrance to it; and having life in- 
surance on the brain, as it were, other members 
of the club soon became interested in the sub- 
ject as a political question. In this way Mr. 
Wright was soon able to effect legislation. 
Sumner, Wilson, Andrew, and Bird gave him 
an almost unqualified support. In 1858 he was 
appointed Insurance Commissioner for Massa- 
chusetts, a position which he held until 1866. 
As Commissioner he formulated the principal 
legislation on life insurance; and his reports, 
which have been published in a volume, are the 
best treatise in English on the practical appli- 
cation of life-insurance principles. 

In 1852 he resigned the editorship of the 
Chronotype, and from that time till 1858 he was 
occupied with life-insurance work, the editing 
of a paper called the Railroad Times, and 
making a number of mechanical inventions, 
most important of which was a calculating 
machine, enough in itself to give a man dis- 
tinction. 

This machine was simply a Gunther rule 
thirty feet in length wrapped on a cylinder and 
turned by a crank. Gunther 's rule is a measure 
on which logarithms are represented by spaces, 
so that by adding and subtracting spaces on this 
cylinder Mr. Wright could perform the longest 



302 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

sums in multiplication and division in two or 
three minutes of time. 

Not only did the Massachusetts insurance 
companies come under Mr. Wright's surveil- 
lance, but the New York Life, the Connecticut 
Mutual, and the Mutual Benefit of New Jersey, 
all large and powerful companies, were obliged 
to conform to his regulations, for their Boston 
offices were too lucrative to be surrendered. 
About this time Gladstone caused an overhaul- 
ing of the English life-insurance companies, 
and a number which proved to be unsound were 
obliged to surrender their charters. Among 
these latter were two companies which held 
offices in Boston, and whose character had 
already been exposed by Elizur Wright. 

In 1850, when he became Commissioner, Mr. 
Wright sent to their agents for a statement of 
their financial standing, and not receiving a 
reply requested them to leave the State. Find- 
ing that the matter could not be evaded, they at 
length forwarded two reports signed by two 
actuaries, both Fellows of the Eoyal Society, 
which were not of a satisfactory character, so 
that Mr. Wright insisted on his previous order. 
The agents then applied for support to Prof. 
Benjamin Pierce, the distinguished mathema- 
tician of Harvard University, and one of the 
most aggressively pro-slavery men about Bos- 
ton. He probably looked upon Elizur Wright 



ELIZUR WRIGHT 303 

as a vulgar fanatic, and supposing that a Fellow 
of the Royal Society must necessarily be an 
honorable man, came forward in support of 
Messrs. Neisen and Woolhouse without suffi- 
ciently investigating the question at issue ; and 
the result was a controversy between Elizur 
Wright and himself in which he was finally 
beaten off the field. 

The statements of both Neisen and Wool- 
house was proved to be fraudulent, and the 
two English companies were expelled from the 
State. 

Mr. Wright's insurance reports brought him 
such celebrity that all the companies wished to 
have his name connected with them. His son, 
Walter C. Wright, became actuary of the New 
England Life, and his daughter, Miss Jane 
Wright, was made actuary of the Mutual Union 
Company. Mr. Wright and his eldest son, John, 
set up a business for calculating the value of 
insurance policies, in which the logarithm 
machine helped them to obtain a large income. 
With his first ten thousand dollars Mr. Wright 
purchased a large house and a tract of land in 
Middlesex Fells, where his family still resides. 

In 1865 the office of Life Insurance Commis- 
sioner was filched from him by a trade politician 
who knew as much of the subject as fresh college 
graduates do of the practical affairs of life. 
Mr. Wright always regretted this, for he felt 



304 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

that his work was not yet complete ; and it is a 
fact that American life insurance, with its good 
and bad features, still remains almost exactly 
as he left it. 

It was only after Elizur Wright had ceased 
to be Commissioner that he discovered a serious 
error in the calculation of the companies, which 
may be explained in the following manner : 

In the beginning, nearly all the insurance 
policies were made payable at death, with an- 
nual premiums ; but the introduction of endow- 
ment policies, payable at a certain age, effected 
a peculiar change in their affairs, of which 
the managers of the companies were not sen- 
sible. Elizur Wright perceived that there were 
two distinct elements in the endowment policies 
which placed them at a disadvatage with ordi- 
ary life policies, and he called this combination 
* ^ savings-bank life insurance. ' ' An endowment 
policy, being payable at a fixed date, required a 
larger premium than one which ran on indefi- 
nitely and by customary usage, and the agent 
who negotiated the policy received the same 
percentage for commission that he would on an 
ordinary-life policy; that is, he received a 
much larger commission in proportion. This 
evil was increased in cases where endowment 
policies were paid for, as often happened, in 
five or ten instalments; and where they were 
paid for in a single instalment the agent re- 



ELIZUR WRIGHT 305 

ceived four or five times what he was properly 
entitled to. 

The same principle was observed by the com- 
panies in the distribution of their surplus, so 
that the holders of endowment policies were 
practically mulcted at both ends of the line. 

In his reports as Insurance Commissioner 
Elizur Wright had recommended this class of 
policies as a salutary provision against poverty 
in old age, and he felt under obligations to the 
public to correct this injustice,* but the in- 
surance agents had also advocated them for 
evident reasons and were naturally opposed to 
any project of reform. The managers of the 
companies also treated the subject coldly, for 
the discrimination against endowments enabled 
them to accumulate a larger reserve which made 
them appear to better advantage before the 
general public. The numerous agents and 
solicitors formed a solid body of opposition and 
raised a chorus against Elizur Wright like that 
which the robins make when you pick your own 
cherries. This class of persons when they are 
actuated by a common impulse make a formid- 
able impression. 

Mr. Wright, after arguing his case with the 
insurance companies for nearly a year without 

* On a policy of ten thousand dollars, it would amount 
to an appreciable sum. 

20 



306 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

effect, appealed to the public through the news- 
papers. This, however, had unexpected conse- 
quences. Mr. Wright's letters produced the 
impression, which he did not intend at all, that 
the insurance companies were unsound, and 
policy-holders rushed to the offices to make in- 
quiries. Many surrendered their policies. 

In this emergency the officers of the com- 
panies went to the editors and explained to 
them that their business would be ruined if Mr. 
Wright was permitted to continue his attacks 
on them. They then made Mr. Wright what 
may have been intended for a magnanimous 
offer, though he did not look on it in that light, — 
namely, an offer of ten thousand dollars a year, 
if he would retire from the actuary business 
and not molest them any longer.* 

Elizur Wright refused this, as he might have 
declined the offer of a cigar, and appealed to 
the Legislatlire. The companies then withdrew 
their business from Mr. Wright and thus re- 
duced his income from twelve thousand dollars 
a year to about three thousand; but this trou- 
bled him no more than it would have Diogenes. 

In the summer of 1872 a portly gentleman 
called at Elizur Wright's office on State Street 

* These events took place thirty years ago and have no 
relation to the present condition and practice of American 
insurance companies. 



ELIZUR WRIGHT 307 

and introduced himself as the president of a 
well-known Western insurance company. As 
it was a pleasant day Mr. Wright invited his 
visitor to Pine Hill, where they could converse 
to better advantage than in a Boston office ; but 
being much absorbed in his subject, while pass- 
ing through Medford Centre, he neglected to 
order a dinner; and the consequence of this 
was that his portly friend was obliged to make 
a lunch on cold meat and potato salad. That 
same evening Mr. Wright's daughter twitted 
him on his lack of forethought, and hoped such 
a thing would not happen again, to which he 
only replied: ^^The kindest thing you can do 
for such a man is to starve him. ' ' Such was his 
philosophy on all occasions. 

He devised a plan for combining life in- 
surance with a savings bank, by which the labor- 
ing man could obtain a certain amount of in- 
surance for his family (or old age) instead of 
interest upon his deposits. This was an admir- 
able idea, and if he had undertaken to carry it 
out in the prime of life he might have succeeded 
in realizing it; but he was now upwards of 
seventy, and his friends concluded that the ex- 
periment would be a risky one, as a favorable 
result would depend entirely on Mr. Wright's 
longevity. At the same time he had another 
enterprise in hand, namely, to convert the 
Middlesex Fells, in which Pine Hill is situated, 



308 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

into a public park. This was greatly needed for 
the crowded population on the northern side of 
Boston, and though the plan was not carried out 
until after his death, he was the originator and 
earliest promoter of it. 

Elizur "Wright's most conspicuous trait was 
generosity. He lived for the world and not for 
himself. He was a man of broad views and 
great designs; a daring, original thinker. He 
respected Emerson, but preferred the philoso- 
phy of John Stuart Mill, from the study of 
which he became an advocate of free trade and 
woman suffrage. 

He died November 21, 1885, in the midst of a 
rain-storm which lasted six days and nights. 
He lies interred at Mt. Hope Cemetery. 



»i 



DE. W. T. G. MORTON 

A DISTINGUISHED American called upon 
Charles Darwin, and in the course of conver- 
sation asked him what he considered the most 
important discovery of the nineteenth century. 
To which Mr. Darwin replied, after a slight 
hesitation: ^'Painless surgery." He thought 
this more beneficial in its effects on human 
affairs than either the steam-engine or the tele- 
graph. Let it also be noted that he spoke of it 
as an invention, rather than as a discovery. 

The person to whom all scientific men now 
attribute the honor of this discovery, or inven- 
tion, is Dr. William T. G. Morton; and, 
although in that matter he was not without 
slight assistance from others, as well as prede- 
cessors in the way of tentative experiments, 
yet it was Doctor Morton who first proved the 
possibility of applying anaesthesia to surgical 
operations of a capital order; and it was he 
who pushed his theory to a practical success. It 
may also be admitted that Columbus could not 
have discovered the Western Hemisphere with- 
out the assistance of Ferdinand and Isabella; 
but it was Columbus who divined the existence 
of the American continent, and afterwards 
proved his theory to be true. There is an under- 

809 



310 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

lying similarity between the labors and lives of 
Columbus and Morton, in spite of large super- 
ficial differences. 

William Thomas Greene Morton was born 
August 19, 1819, in Charlton, Massachusetts, a 
small town in the Connecticut Valley. His 
father was a flourishing farmer and lived in an 
old-fashioned but commodious country house, 
with a large square chimney in the centre of it. 
William was not only a bright but a very dex- 
terous boy, and was sent to school in the acad- 
emy at Northfield, and afterwards at Leicester. 
It is a family tradition that he early showed an 
experimental tendency by brewing concoctions 
of various kinds for the benefit of his young 
companions, and that he once made his sister 
deathly sick in this manner. His father, finding 
him a more energetic boy than the average of 
farmers' sons, advised him to go to Boston, to 
seek whatever fortune he could find there. 

This resulted in his obtaining employment, 
probably through the Charlton clergyman, in 
the office of a religious periodical, the Christian 
Witness; but the situation, though a comfort- 
able one, was not adapted to his tastes, and 
from some unexplained attraction to the pro- 
fession, he decided to study dentistry. This he 
accordingly did, graduating at the Baltimore 
Dental College in 1842. He then engaged an 
office in Boston, and soon acquired a lucrative 



DR. W. T. G. MORTON 311 

practice. He was an uncommonly handsome 
man, with a determined look in his eye, but also 
a kindly expression and pleasing manners, 
which may have brought him more practice than 
his skill in dentistry, — although that was also 
good. 

The following year he was married to Miss 
Elizabeth Whitman, of Farmington, Connecti- 
cut, whose uncle, at least, had been a member 
of Congress, — a highly genteel family in that 
region. In fact, her parents objected to Doctor 
Morton on account of his profession, and it was 
only after his promise to study medicine and 
become a regular practitioner that they con- 
sented to the match. Accordingly, Doctor Mor- 
ton in the autumn of 1844 commenced a course 
at the Harvard Medical-School. 

Mrs. Morton was a handsome young woman, 
with a fair face and elegant figure. It would 
have been difficult to find a better looking couple 
anywhere in the suburbs, and with good health 
and strength it seemed as if fortune would cer- 
tainly smile on them. Doctor Morton built a 
summer cottage at Wellesley, where the public 
library now stands, and planted a grove of trees 
about it ; but a mere earthly paradise could not 
satisfy him. He was not an ambitious man, or 
he would not have chosen the dental profession ; 
but the food he lived on was not of this world. 
He had the daring spirit, the speculative tem- 



312 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

perament, and restless energy of the born dis- 
coverer. Already he had made improvements 
in the manufacture of artificial teeth. He was 
the first, or one of the first, to recognize the 
importance of chemistry in connection with the 
practice of medicine. He had no sooner re- 
turned to Boston than he commenced the study 
of chemistry with Dr. Charles T. Jackson, 
spending from six to ten hours a week in his 
laboratory; and he thus became acquainted 
with the properties and peculiarities of most of 
the chemical ingredients known at that time. 

Mrs. Morton soon discovered with awe and 
trepidation that she had married no ordinary 
man. That he had a real skeleton in his closet 
was to have been expected; but, besides this, 
there were rows of mysterious-looking bottles, 
with substances in them quite different from 
the medicines which were prescribed by the doc- 
tors in Farmington. He tried experiments on 
their black water-spaniel and nearly killed him ; 
and even descended to fishes and insects. He 
would muse for hours by himself, and if she 
asked him what he was thinking of he gave her 
no explanation that she could understand. 
Although he was so attractive and pleasing, he 
did not care much for human society.* He was 
kind and good to her, and with that she was 

* McClure's Magazine, September, 1896. 



DR. W. T. G. MORTOK 313 

content. A more devoted wife, or faithful 
mother, has not been portrayed in poetry or 
romance. 

These phenomena in Doctor Morton's early 
life remind one of certain processes in the bud- 
ding of a flower. They indicate a tendency to 
some object which perhaps was not at the time 
wholly clear to the man himself. Impelled by 
the humanitarian spirit of the age, he moved 
forward with a clear eye and firm hand to grasp 
the opportunity when it arrived, — nor was it 
long delayed. 

In considering the discovery of etherization 
we ought to eliminate all evidence of an ex parte 
character, unless it is supported circumstan- 
tially; but there is no reason why we should 
disbelieve Mrs. Morton's statement that her 
husband made experiments with sulphuric 
ether ; that his clothes smelt of it ; and that he 
tried to persuade laboring-men to allow him. to 
experiment upon them with it. As Dr. J. Col- 
lins Warren says : * ' * Anaesthesia had been the 
dream of many surgeons and scientists, but it 
had been classed with aerial navigation and 
other improbable inventions." As long ago as 
1818 Faraday had discovered the chief prop- 
erties of ether, with the exception of its effect 
in deadening sensibility. In 1836 Dr. Mor- 

* Anaestliesia in Surgery, 15. 



314 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

rill Wyman and Dr. Samuel Parkman had ex- 
perimented with it on themselves at the Mas- 
sachusetts Hospital, but without taking a suffi- 
cient quantity to produce unconsciousness. It 
was actually employed in 1842 by Dr. Craw- 
ford W. Long, at the University of Pennsyl- 
sylvania, in some minor cases of surgery, but 
he would seem to have lost confidence in his 
method and afterwards abandoned it. 

In December, 1844, Horace Wells, a dentist 
of Hartford, had a tooth extracted by his own 
request while under the influence of nitrous 
oxide ; and the following month he came to Bos- 
ton, and having made his discovery known, an 
operation at the hospital was undertaken with 
his assistance, but the patient screamed, and it 
proved a failure so far as anaesthesia was con- 
cerned. 

From these facts we readily draw the follow- 
ing conclusions : That the discovery of painless 
surgery was essentially a practical affair for 
which only a slight knowledge of chemistry was 
required; that it was not a discovery made at 
hap-hazard, but one that necessitated a skilful 
hand and a clear understanding of the subject; 
and that the supposition which has sometimes 
been advanced that Doctor Morton was neces- 
sarily indebted to Doctor Jackson for a knowl- 
edge of the hypnotic effect of ether is wholly 
gratuitous. 



DR. W. T. G. MORTON 315 

We will now quote directly from Doctor War- 
ren's lecture on "The Influence of Anaesthesia 
on the Surgery of the Nineteenth Century, ' ' de- 
livered before the American Surgical Associa- 
tion in 1897 : 

" Morton having acquainted himself by conversation with 
Mr. Metcalf and Mr. Burnett, both leading druggists, as to 
purity and qualities of ether, and having also conversed 
with Mr. Wightman, a philosophical instrument-maker, and 
with Doctor Jackson as to inhaling apparatus, proceeded 
to experiment upon himself. After inhaling the purer 
quality of ether from a handkerchief he awoke to find that 
he had been insensible for seven or eight minutes. 

" The same day a stout, healthy man came to his oflSce 
suffering from great pain and desiring to have a tooth 
extracted. Dreading the pain, he accepted willingly Mor- 
ton's proposal to use ether, and the tooth was extracted 
without suffering. Morton reported his success the next 
day to Jackson, and conversed with him as to the best 
methods of bringing his discovery to the attention of the 
medical profession and the public. Jackson pointed out 
that tooth-pulling was not a sufficient test, as many people 
claimed to have teeth pulled without pain. It was finally 
decided that the crucial test lay in a public demonstration 
in the operating theatre of a hospital in a surgical case." 

There is one statement in the above to which, 
according to our rules of literary procedure, 
we feel obliged to take exception, — that is, the 
statement concerning the interview between 
Morton and Jackson after the successful ad- 
ministration of ether to Morton's patient. It 



316 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

is substantially Doctor Jackson's own state- 
ment. Doctor Morton gave a wholly different 
account before the Congressional Committee of 
1852. He said: 

"I went to Doctor Jackson, told him what I had done, 
and asked him to give me a certificate that ether was harm- 
less in its effects. This he positively refused to do. I then 
told him I should go to the principal surgeons and have the 
question thoroughly tried. I then called on Doctor Warren, 
who promised me an early opportunity to try the experi- 
ment, and soon after I received the invitation. . . ." 

Now as these are both ex parte statements, 
and as there are no witnesses on either side, 
according to the rule we have already estab- 
lished, they will both have to be eliminated.* 
Doctor Morton, however, says previously that 
it was Doctor Hayward with whom he consulted 
as to the best method of bringing his discovery 
before the world. 

In the consideration of this subject we come 
upon a man of rare character — rare even in his 
profession. Dr. John C. Warren was the per- 
fect type of an Anglo-Saxon surgeon. His 
courage and dexterity were fully equalled by 
his kindness and sympathy for the patient. 
Cool and collected in the most trying emer- 
gencies, it has been said of him that he never 
performed a capital operation without feeling a 

* The Congressional Committee of 1852 did not find Doc- 
tor Jackson's report of this interview trustworthy. 



DR. W. T. G. MORTON 317 

pain in his heart ; and the evidence of this was 
marked upon his face, so that it is even visible 
in the photographs of him. He deserved to 
have his portrait painted by Eubens. In 1847 
Dr. Mason Warren published a review of 
etherization, in which he makes this important 
statement : 

" In the autumn of 1846 Dr. W. T. G. Morton, a dentist 
in Boston, a person of great ingenuity, patience, and perti- 
nacity of purpose, called on me several times to show some 
of his inventions. At that time I introduced him to Dr. 
John C. Warren. Shortly after, in October, I learned from 
Doctor Warren that Doctor Morton had visited him and 
informed him that he was in possession of or had discovered 
a means of preventing pain, which he had proved in dental 
operations, and wished Doctor Warren to give him an 
opportunity in a surgical operation. After some questions 
on the subject in regard to its action and the safety of it. 
Doctor Warren promised that he would do so. . . . The 
operation was therefore deferred until Friday, October 16, 
when the ether was administered by Doctor Morton, and 
the operation performed by Doctor Warren." 

It was eminently fitting that Dr. John C. War- 
ren should be the one to introduce painless sur- 
gery to the medical profession. Next to Mor- 
ton he deserves the highest credit for the 
revolution which it effected : a glorious revolu- 
tion, fully equal to that of 1688. His quick 
recognition of Morton's character, and the con- 
fidence he placed in him as the man of the hour, 
deserve the highest commendation. Doctor 



318 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

Warren had invited Doctor Jackson to attend 
this critical experiment with sulphuric ether at 
the Massachusetts Hospital; but he declined 
with the trite excuse that he was obliged to go 
out of town. This has been generally inter- 
preted by the medical profession as a lack of 
courage on Jackson's part to face the music, 
but it may also have been owing to his jealousy 
of Morton. 

This happened October 16th, and on Novem- 
ber 13th, Dr. C. T. Jackson wrote to M. Elie de 
Beaumont, a member of the French Academy, 
this remarkable letter: 

" I request permission to communicate through your 
medium to the Academy of Sciences a discovery which I 
have made, and which I believe important for the relief of 
suffering humanity, as well as of great value to the surgical 
profession. Five or six years ago I noticed the peculiar 
state of insensibility into which the nervous system is 
thrown by the inhalation of the vapor of pure sulphuric 
ether, which I respired abundantly, — first by way of experi- 
ments, and afterwards when I had a severe catarrh, caused 
by the inhalation of chlorine gas. I have latterly made a 
useful application of this fact by persuading a dentist of 
this city to administer the vapor of ether to his patients, 
when about to undergo the operation of extraction of teeth. 
It was observed that persons suffered no pain in the opera- 
tion, and that no inconvenience resulted from the adminis- 
tration of the vapor." 

It was the opinion of Eobert Eantoul and 
other members of the Congressional Committee 



DR. W. T. G. MORTON 319 

that Doctor Jackson suffered from a ^'heated 
and disordered imagination, ' ' and that is the 
most charitable view that one can take of such 
a letter as this. Whatever may have been the 
result of Doctor Jackson's investigations with 
sulphuric ether, it is certain that he added 
nothing to the scientific knowledge of his time 
in that respect ; * and if he persuaded Doctor 
Morton to make use of it, why was he not pres- 
ent to oversee his subordinate ? also, why did he 
make a charge on his books a few days later 
against Doctor Morton of &ve hundred dollars 
for advice and information concerning the ap- 
plication of ether? It is not customary to 
charge subordinates for their service but to 
reward them. The two horns of this dilemma 
are sharp and penetrating. 

In a later memorial of the same general tenor, 
which Doctor Jackson forwarded to Baron 
Humboldt, he stated that he had applied to other 
dentists in Boston to make the experiment of 
etherization, but found them unwilling to take 
the risk; but the names of the dentists have 
never been made public, nor did any such 
I appear afterwards to testify in Doctor Jack- 
I son's behalf. 

Still more remarkable was the action of the 
French Academy of Arts and Sciences in these 

* Edinburgh Medical Journal, April 1, 1857. 



320 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

premises. The French Academy was founded 
by Richelieu, but abolished in the first French 
Revolution, with so many other enchanted phan- 
tasms. Napoleon re-established it, and gave it 
new life and vigor by a discriminating choice of 
membership ; but it is a close corporation which 
renews itself by its own votes, and such a body 
of men is always in danger of becoming a 
mutual admiration society, and if this happens 
its public utility is at an end. In the present 
instance the action of the French Academy was 
illogical, unscientific, and mischievous. 

Doctor Jackson's letter was brought before 
that august body on January 18, 1847, but pre- 
vious to that time Doctor Warren had written 
to Doctor Velpeau, an eminent French surgeon, 
concerning the success of etherization at the 
Massachusetts Hospital, and suggesting the use 
of it in the hospitals at Paris ; and Doctor Vel- 
peau referred to this fact at the meeting of 
January 18th. The contents of this letter have 
never been made public ; but it is incredible that 
Doctor Jackson's claim should have received 
any support from it. Nevertheless, the mem- 
bers of the French Academy decided to divide 
one of the Mouthyon prizes (of &ve thousand 
francs for great scientific discoveries) between 
Dr. W. T. G. Morton and Elie de Beaumont's 
American friend. Dr. C. T. Jackson; and they 
conferred this particular favor on Dr. Jackson 



DR. W. T. G. MORTON 321 

at his own representation, without one witness 
in his favor, and without making an inquiry 
into the circumstances of the discovery. Could 
the Northfield Academy of boys and girls have 
acted in a more heedless or unscientific manner ? 

After the justice of this decision had been 
questioned, the French Academy promulgated 
a defence of their previous action, of which the 
essence was that the scientific theory of Doctor 
Jackson was as essential to the discovery of 
etherization as the practical skill of Doctor 
Morton; that is, they attempted to decide a 
matter of fact by an a priori dogmatism. Was 
not the instruction that Doctor Morton received 
from the dental college in Baltimore also essen- 
tial to the discovery, — and to go behind that, — 
what he learned at the primary school at Charl- 
ton? When learning is divorced from reason it 
becomes mere pedantry or sublimated igno- 
rance, and is more dangerous to the community 
than unlettered ignorance can be. 

This blunder of the French Academy had evil 
consequences for both Morton and Jackson ; for 
it placed the latter in a false position towards 
the world, and brought about a collision be- 
tween them which not only lasted during their 
lives, but was also carried on by their friends 
and relatives long afterwards. It is doubtful 
if Jackson would have contested Morton's 
claim without European support. 

21 



322 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

With true dignity of character Doctor Morton 
declined to divide the Mouthyon prize with 
Doctor Jackson, and the French Academy ac- 
cordingly had a large gold medal stamped in his 
honor, and as this did not exhaust the original 
donation, the remainder of the sum was ex- 
pended on a highly ornamental case. The trus- 
tees of the Massachusetts Hospital partly sub- 
scribed and partly collected a thousand dollars 
which they presented to Doctor Morton in a 
handsome silver casket. The King of Sweden 
sent him the Cross of the Order of Wasa ; and 
he also received the Cross of the Order of St. 
Vladimir from the Tsar of Russia. He was 
only twenty-seven years of age at this time. 

The ensuing eight years of Morton's life were 
spent in a desperate effort for recognition — 
recognition of the importance of his discovery 
and of his own merits as the discoverer. No 
one can blame him for this. As events proved, 
it would have been far better for him if he had 
finished his course at the medical-school and set 
up his sign in the vicinity of Beacon Street; 
but the wisest man can but dimly foresee the 
future. Doctor Morton had every reason to 
believe that there was a fortune to be made in 
etherization. He consulted Rufus Choate, who 
advised him to obtain a patent or proprietary 
right in his discovery. Hon. Caleb Eddy under- 



DR. W. T. G. MORTON 323 

took to do this for him, and being supported by 
a sound opinion from Daniel Webster, easily 
obtained it. Now, however, Morton's troubles 
began. 

He exempted the Massachusetts Hospital 
from the application of his royalty, and it was 
only right that he should do so; but, unfortu- 
nately, it was the only large hospital where 
etherization was regularly practised. In order 
to extend its application Doctor Morton secured 
the services of three young physicians, prac- 
tised them in the use of the gas, and paid them 
a thousand dollars each to go forth into the 
world as proselytes of his discovery; but they 
met everywhere with a cold reception, and were 
several times informed that if the Massachu- 
setts Hospital enjoyed the use of etherization, 
other hospitals ought to have the same privi- 
lege ; so that his enterprise proved of no imme- 
diate advantage. 

The Mexican War was now at its height, and 
Doctor Morton offered the use of etherization 
to the government for a very small royalty, but 
his offer was declined by the Secretary of War. 
He soon discovered, however, that surgeons in 
the army and navy were making free use of it, — 
contrary to law and the rights of men. Indi- 
viduals all over the country — dentists and sur- 
geons — were doing the same thing; and it was 
more difficult to prevent this than to execute the 



324 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

game-laws. For such an order of affairs the 
decision of the French Academy was largely 
responsible, for if men only find a shadow of 
right on the side of self-interest, they are likely 
enough to take advantage of it. 

Meanwhile Doctor Jackson, with a few 
friends and a large body of Homoeopaths who 
acted in opposition to the regulars of the Mas- 
sachusetts Hospital, kept up a continual fusil- 
lade against Doctor Morton; but this did him 
little harm, for early in 1847 the trustees of the 
hospital decided, by a unanimous vote, that the 
honor of discovering etherization properly 
belonged to him. 

Doctor Jackson questioned the justice of this 
decision, and applied for a reconsideration of 
the subject. Whereupon the subject was recon- 
sidered the following year, and the same verdict 
rendered as before. Doctor Jackson then car- 
ried his case to the Boston Academy of Arts and 
Sciences, when Professor Agassiz asked him the 
pertinent question: ^'But, Doctor Jackson, did 
you make one little experiment f ' ' adding drily, 
after receiving a negative reply: ^^It would 
have been better if you had. ' ' 

It is to be regretted that Doctor Jackson 
should have attacked Doctor Morton's private 
life (which appears to have been fully as com- 
mendable as his own), and also that R. W. 
Emerson should have entered the lists in favor 



DR. W. T. G. MORTON 325 

of his brother-in-law. In one of his later books 
Emerson designates Doctor Jackson as the dis- 
coverer of etherization. This was setting his 
own judgment above that of the legal and medi- 
cal professions, and even above the French 
Academy; but Emerson had lived so long in 
intuitions and poetical concepts that he was not 
a fairly competent person to judge of a matter 
of fact. It is doubtful if he made use of the in- 
ductive method of reasoning during his life. 

Doctor Morton sought legal advice in regard 
to the infringement of his patent rights ; but he 
found that legal proceedings in such cases were 
very expensive, and was counselled to apply to 
Congress for redress and assistance. This 
seemed to him a good plan, for if he could ex- 
change his rights in etherization for a hundred 
thousand dollars, he would be satisfied; but in 
the end it proved a Nessus shirt to strangle the 
life out of him. He soon found that Congress 
could not be moved by a sense of justice, but 
only by personal influence. He gave up his busi- 
ness in Boston and went to Washington with his 
family, but this soon exhausted his slender re- 
sources. Knowing devils informed him that if 
he wished to obtain a hundred thousand dollars 
from the government he would have to expend 
fifteen or twenty thousand in lobbying, but the 
idea of this was hateful to him, and he declined 
to make the requisite pledges. 



326 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

The winter of 1850 and of 1851 passed with- 
out result, until finally in December of the latter 
year, Bissel, of Illinois, made a speech in Doc- 
tor Morton's favor, calling attention to the fact 
that the government had been pirating his 
patent, and proposing that the subject be re- 
ferred to a committee. Robert Rantoul sec- 
onded the motion, and the step was taken. It 
was considered better for the chances of success 
that the proposition should come from a West- 
ern man. 

This committee continued its meeting 
throughout the winter and made a thorough- 
going examination of the question before it. 
The frankness and plain character of Doctor 
Morton's testimony is much in his favor, and 
the description he gave of his own proceedings 
previous to the first operation in the Massa- 
chusetts Hospital show how hard he wrestled 
with his discovery, — wrestled like Jacob of old, 
— working half the night with an instrument- 
maker to devise a suitable apparatus for inhala- 
tion. Doctor Jackson and Horace Wells also 
presented their claims to the committee and 
were respectfully considered. 

The report of this committee is a valuable 
document, — a study for young lawyers in the 
sifting of evidence, — and of itself a severe criti- 
cism on the judgment of the French Academy, 
which it considered at too great a distance to 



DR. W. T. G. MORTON 327 

judge fairly of the circumstances attending the 
advent of painless surgery. The committee de- 
cided unanimously that Doctor Wells did not 
carry his experiments far enough to reach a 
decided result; that Doctor Jackson's testi- 
mony was contradictory and not much to be 
depended on ; and that the credit of discovering 
painless surgery properly appertained to Dr. 
W. T. G. Morton. They recommended an ap- 
propriation of a hundred thousand dollars to be 
given to Doctor Morton in return for the free 
use of etherization by the surgeons of the army 
and navy. 

A hundred thousand dollars was little enough. 
The British Government paid thirty thousand 
pounds as a gratuity for the discovery of vac- 
cination; and more recently a poor German 
student made a much larger sum by the inven- 
tion of a drug which has since fallen into dis- 
use. Half a million would not have been more 
than Morton deserved, and a hundred thousand 
might have been bestowed on Wells. 

Doctor Morton must have thought now that 
the clouds were lifting for him at last ; but they 
soon settled down darker than ever. The com- 
mittee 's report was only printed towards the 
close of the session, and Congress, gone rabid 
over the Presidential election, neglected to con- 
sider it. Neither did it take further action the 
following winter. A year later a bill was intro- 



328 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

duced in the Senate for Doctor Morton's relief, 
and was ably supported by Douglas, of Illinois, 
and Hale, of New Hampshire. It passed the 
Senate by a small majority, but was defeated 
by the ^'mud-gods'' of the House — defeated by 
men who were pilfering the national treasury 
in sinecures for their relatives and supporters. 
In the history of our government I know of 
nothing more disgraceful than this, — except the 
exculpation of Brooks for his assault on 
Sumner. 

Doctor Morton was a ruined man. His slen- 
der means had long since been exhausted, and 
he had been running in debt for the past two 
or three years, as Hawthorne did at the old 
manse. Even his house at Wellesley was mort- 
gaged. His business was gone, and his health 
was shattered. He felt as a man does in an 
earthquake. The government could not have 
treated him more cruelly unless it had put him 
to death. 

It was now, as a final resort, that he went to 
see President Pierce, always a kindly man, ex- 
cept where Kansas affairs were concerned ; and 
Pierce advised him to bring a suit for infringe- 
ment of his rights against a surgeon in the navy. 
Doctor Morton found a lawyer who was willing 
to take the risk for a large share of the profits, 
and gained his case. His house was saved, but 
he returned to Wellesley poorer than when he 



DR. W. T. G. MORTON 329 

came to Boston to seek his fortune, a youth of 
eighteen. 

There was great indignation at the Massachu- 
setts Hospital when the result of Doctor Mor- 
ton's case before Congress was known there, 
and soon after his return an effort was made to 
raise a substantial testimonial for him. That 
noble-hearted physician. Dr. Henry I. Bow- 
ditch, interested himself so conspicuously in 
this that Doctor Morton named his youngest 
son for him. 

A similar effort was made by the medical 
profession in New York city, and a sufficient 
sum obtained to render Doctor Morton mod- 
erately comfortable during the remainder of 
his earthly existence, and to educate his eldest 
son. 

Doctor Morton's health was too much shat- 
tered for professional work now, and he re- 
signed himself to his fate. He raised cattle at 
Wellesley, and imported fine cattle as a health- 
ful out-of-door occupation. In the autumn of 
1862 he joined the Army of the Potomac as a 
volunteer surgeon, and applied ether to more 
than two thousand wounded soldiers during the 
battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and 
the Wilderness. At the same time Senator Wil- 
revive the gratuity for Morton in Congress, but 
revive the gratuity for Morton in Congress, but 
the decision of the French Academy was in 



330 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

men's minds, and a vicious precedent proved 
stronger than reason. 

I saw Doctor Morton for the last time about 
nine months before his death; and the impres- 
sion his appearance made on me was indelible. 
He was walking in the path before his house 
with his eldest daughter, and he seemed like the 
victim of an old Greek tragedy — a noble OEdi- 
pus who had solved the Sphynx's riddle, at- 
tended by his faithful Antigone. 

In July, 1868, a torrid wave swept over the 
Northern States which carried off many frail 
and delicate persons in the large cities, and 
Doctor Morton was one of those who suffered 
from it. He happened to be in New York City 
at the time, and went to Central Park to escape 
the feeling of suffocation which oppressed him, 
but never returned alive. He now lies in Mount 
Auburn Cemetery, with a modest monument 
over his grave erected by his Boston friends, 
with this epitaph composed by Dr. Jacob 
Bigelow : 

WILLIAM T. G. MORTON 

INVENTOR AND REVEALER OF ANESTHETIC INHALATION 

BY WHOM, PAIN IN SURGERY WAS ARRESTED AND ANNULLED 

BEFORE WHOM, IN ALL TIME, SURGERY WAS AGONY 

SINCE WHOM, SCIENCE HAS CONTROL OF PAIN 

Doctor Morton was a self-made man, but not 
a rough diamond, — rather one of Nature's gen- 



DR. W. T. G. MORTON 331 

tlemen. The pleasant urbanity of his manner 
was so conspicuous that no person of sensibility- 
could approach him without being impressed by 
it. His was a character such as those who live 
by academic rules would be more likely to mis- 
judge than to comprehend. 

The semi-centennial of painless surgery was 
celebrated, in 1896, in Boston, New York, Lon- 
don, and other cities, and the credit of its dis- 
covery was universally awarded to William T. 
G. Morton. About the same time it happened 
that the Massachusetts State House was recon- 
structed, and William Endicott, as Commis- 
sioner, and a near relative of E-obert Rantoul, 
had Morton's name emblazoned in the Hall of 
Fame with those of Franklin, Morse, and Bell. 
This may be said to have decided the contro- 
versy; but, like many another benefactor of 
mankind. Doctor Morton's reward on earth was 
a crown of thorns. 



LEAVES FEOM A EOMAN DIARY 
February, 1869 

(Rewritten in 1897) 

As I look out of P 's windows on the Via 

Frattina every morning at the plaster bust of 
Pius IX., I like his face more and more, and 
feel that he is not an unworthy companion to 
George Washington and the young Augustus.* 
I think there may be something of the fox, or 
rather of the crow, in his composition, but his 
face has the wholeness of expression which 
shows a sound and healthy mind, — not a patch- 
work character. I was pleased to hear that he 
was originally a liberal; and the first, after 
the long conservative reaction of Metternich, to 
introduce reforms in the states of the Church. 
The Revolution of 1848 followed too quickly, 
and the extravagant proceedings of Mazzini and 
Garibaldi drove him into the ranks of the con- 
servatives, where he has remained ever since. 
Carlyle compared him to a man who had an 
old tin-kettle which he thought he would mend, 
but as soon as he began to tinker it the thing 
went to pieces in his hands. The Revolution of 
1848 proved an unpractical experiment, but it 

* Three busts in a row. 
332 



LEAVES FROM A ROMAN DIARY 333 

opened the way for Victor Emanuel and a more 
sound liberalism in 1859. 

We attended service at the Sistine Chapel 
yesterday in company with two young ladies 
from Philadelphia, who wore long black veils 
so that Pius IX. might not catch the least 
glimpse of their pretty faces. I was disap- 
pointed in my hope of obtaining a view of the 
Pope's face. Cardinal Bonaparte sat just in 
front of us, a man well worth observing. He 
looks to be the ablest living member of that 
family, and bears a decided resemblance to the 
old Napoleon. His features are strong, his eyes 
keen, and he wears his red cap in a jaunty 
manner on the side of his head. When the bless- 
ing was passed around the conclave of Cardi- 
nals, Bonaparte transferred it to his next 
neighbor as if he meant to put it through him. 
It is supposed that he will be the successor of 
Pius IX. ; but, as Rev. Samuel Longfellow says, 
that will depend very much upon whether Louis 
Napoleon is alive at the time of the election. 

The singing in the Sistine Chapel is not worth 
listening to, besides having unpleasant associa- 
tions ; so during the service we had an excellent 
opportunity to study Michael Angelo's Last 
Judgment — for there was nothing else to be 
done. 

Kugler considers the picture an inharmonious 
composition, and that nothing could be more 



334 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

disagreeable than the stout figure of St. Bar- 
tholomew holding a flaying knife in one hand 
and his own mortal hide in the other. This 
is not a pleasant spectacle ; but Michael Angelo 
did not paint for other people's pleasure, but 
rather to satisfy his own conscience. It was 
customary to introduce St. Bartholomew in this 
manner, for there was no other way in which 
he could be identified. We found the towering 
form of St. Christopher on the left side of the 
Saviour rather more of an eyesore than St. 
Bartholomew, whose expression of awe par- 
tially redeems his appearance. 

The Saviour has a herculean frame, but his 
face and head are magnificent. He has no 
beard, and his hair is arranged in festoons 
which gives the impression of a wreath of grape 
leaves. The expression of his face is the noblest 
I have seen in any work of art in Rome ; the face 
that has risen through suffering; calm, com- 
passionate, immutable. The Madonna seems 
like a girl beside this stalwart form, and she 
draws close to her son with naive timidity at 
the vast concourse which crowds about them. 
Her face is expressive of resignation and com- 
passion rather than any joyful feeling. 

The left side of this vast painting, in which 
the bodies of men and women are rising from 
their graves, is less interesting than the right 
side, where the saints and blessed are gathered 



LEAVES FROM A ROMAN DIARY 335 

together above and the sinners are hurled down 
below. Michael Angelo's saints and apostles 
look like vigorous men of affairs, and are all 
rather stout and muscular. The attitudes of 
some of them are by no means conventional, but 
they are natural and unconstrained. St. Peter, 
holding forth the keys, is a magnificent figure. 
The group of the saved who are congregated 
above the saints is the pleasantest portion of 
the picture. Here Damon and Pythias embrace 
each other ; a young husband springs to greet 
the wife whom he lost too early ; a poor unfor- 
tunate to whom life was a curse is timidly 
raising his eyes, scarcely believing that he is in 
paradise ; men with fine philosophic heads con- 
verse together ; and a number of honest serving- 
women express their astonishment with such 
gestures as are customary among that class of 
persons. 

In the lunettes above, wingless angels are 
hovering with the cross, the column, and other 
instruments of Christ 's agony, which they clasp 
with a loving devotion. In the lower right-hand 
corner, Charon appears (taken from pagan 
mythology) with a boat-load of sinners, whom 
he smites with his oar according to Dante's de- 
scription. He is truly a terrible demon, and 
his fiery eyes gleam across the length of the 
chapel. Minos, who receives the boat-load in 
the likeness of Biagio da Cesena, the pope's 



336 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

master of ceremonies, is another to match him. 
A modern fop with hanged hair is stepping 
from the boat to the shore of hell. This is said 
to be the best painted portion of the picture, — 
most life-like and free from mannerism. It is 
a mighty work, and too little appreciated, like | 
many other works of art, chiefly owing to the 
critics, who do not understand it, and write a 
lingo of their own which is not easy to make out 
and does not come to much after all.* 

After the service we went into St. Peter's 
with the ladies, and walked the whole circuit of 
the church. Our ladies talked meanwhile ex- 
actly as they might at an American watering- j 
place, without apparently observing anything 
about them. When we came to the statue of St. 

Peter, P said, pointing to the big toe : ^^ You 

see there the mischief that can be done by too 
much kissing." Nearly a third of the toe has 
been worn away by the oscular applications of 
the faithful. 

Feb. 4. — Dr. B. B. Appleton, an American 
resident of Florence, is here on a flying visit. 
We have heard from many sources of the kind- 
ness of this man to American travellers, espe- 
cially to young students. In fact, he took P 

* All this shows what a heart there was in Michael Angelo, 
and dissipates the assertion of a recent English biographer 
that Michael Angelo painted masks instead of faces, with 
little or no expression. 



LEAVES FROM A ROMAN DIARY 337 

into his house while at Florence, and enter- 
tained him in the most generous manner. He 
has done the same for Mrs. Julia Ward Howe 
and many others. He lives with an Italian 
family who were formerly in the service of the 
Grand Duke of Tuscany, and who were ruined 
by the recent change of rulers. Dr. Appleton 
boards with them, and helps to support them in 
other ways. In spite of his goodness he does 
not seem to be happy. 

One of his chief friends in Florence is Frau- 
lein Assig, who was banished from Prussia 
together with her publisher for editing Von 
Humboldt's memoirs, which were perhaps too 
severely critical of the late king of Prussia. 
The book, however, had an excellent sale, and 
she now lives contentedly in Florence, where 
she is well acquainted both with prominent lib- 
erals and leading members of the government. 
Dr. Appleton reports that a cabinet officer lately 
said to her, ^'We may move to Rome at any 
time. ' ' 

Louis Napoleon is the main-stay of the pap- 
acy, and the only one it has. The retrocession 
of Venetia to Italy has separated Austria effect- 
ually from the states of the Church, and the 
Spaniards are too much taken up with their 
internal affairs to interfere at present in the 
pope's behalf. Napoleon's health is known to 
be delicate, and prayers for his preservation 

22 



338 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

are offered up daily in Eoman churches. If he 
should die before his son comes of age great 
political changes may be looked for. 

Meanwhile murmurs of discontent are heard 
on all sides. The city is unclean and badly 
cared for. The civil offices are said to be filled 
mainly with nepheivs of cardinals and other 
prelates. Even Italians of the lower classes 
know enough of political economy to foresee 
that if Rome was the capital of Italy it would 
be more prosperous than it is at present. The 
value of land would rise, and all the small trades 
would flourish. This is what is really under- 
mining the power of Pius IX. A most curious 
sign of the times is the general belief among 
the Roman populace that the Pope has an evil 
eye. How long since this originated I have not 
been able to learn ; but it is not uncommon for 
those who chance to see the pope in his car- 
riage, especially women, to go immediately into 
the nearest church for purification. A few days 
since the train from Rome to Florence ran into 
a buffalo, and the locomotive was thrown off 
the track. Even this was attributed to the fact 
that the engineer had encountered the pope 
near the Quirinal the previous Sunday. 

Dr. Appleton told us a story at dinner about 
the youth of Louis Napoleon. His Florentine 
housekeeper, Gori, remembers Hortense and 
her two sons very distinctly; for Louis once 



LEAVES FROM A ROMAN DIARY 339 

met him in the Boboli Gardens and insisted on 
his smoking a cigar, in order to laugh at him 
when it had made him sick, — as it was Gori^s 
first experience with tobacco. He also says that 
on one occasion when the young princes had 
some sort of a feast together, the others all gave 
the caterer from five to ten francs as a pour- 
hoir, but Louis Napoleon gave him a twenty- 
franc piece. When his companions expressed 
their surprise at this Louis said: ''It is only 
right that I should do so, for some day I shall 
be Emperor." 

As a rule few Italian men attend church. 
The women go; but the men, if not heretical, 
are at least rather indifferent on the subject of 
religion. Macaulay refers to this fact in his 
essay on Macchiavelli, and Dr. Appleton, who 
has lived among them, knows it to be true. To 
make amends for it, English and American 
ladies are returning to the fold of St. Peter in 
large numbers ; and many of them bring their 
male relatives eventually with them. I believe 
this to be largely a matter of fashion. They 
have always accepted the Protestant creed as 
a matter of course, and coming here, where they 
are separated from all previous associations, 
they find themselves out of tune with their sur- 
roundings. They feel lonely, as all travellers 
do at times, and being in need of sympathy are 
easily impressed by those about them. Most of 



340 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

them have Catholic maids, who often serve as 
stepping-stones to the acquaintance of the 
priest. Conversion gives them a kind of im- 
portance, which Catholic ladies of rank know 
how to make the most of. The external gran- 
deur of Catholicism as we see it here has also 
its due influence. 

Feh. 9. — I was greatly disgusted last evening 
while calling on two New England ladies, who 
were formerly my schoolmates, to have a pom- 
pous priest walk in and take possession of the 
parlor, spoiling my pleasant tete-a-tete. He sat 
in the middle of the room like a pail of water, 
and stared ahout in the most ill-mannered way. 
My friends remarked that he was the ahhate 
of the Pantheon, and he inquired if I had been 
to see it ; to which I replied that I had, and that 
I considered it the noblest building in Rome. 
This seemed to be a new idea to him, and one 
which he did not altogether like. Not long since 
I came upon a priest drinking wine with some 
young artists, and laughing at jokes for which 
a stage-driver might be ashamed. There are 
fine exceptions among them, but as a class they 
appear to me coarse and even vicious, — by no 
means spiritually attractive. Monks are not 
attractive either, but in their way they are 
much more interesting. Religion seems to be 
meat and drink to them. 

P and I were invited to dine by an Ameri- 



LEAVES FROM A ROMAN DIARY 341 

can Catholic lady who was formerly a friend of 
Margaret Fuller, and who having been incau- 
tiously left in Rome by her husband, embraced 
Catholicism before he was fairly across the 
Atlantic,— to his lasting sorrow and vexation. 
Being in an influential position she has made 
many converts, and it is said that she has come 
to Rome on the present occasion to be sainted 

by the pope. She has already loaned P a 

biography of Father Lacordaire, which he has 
not had leisure to read. He referred to it, as 
soon as politeness permitted, with a shrewd in- 
quiry as to whether the book did not give rather 
a rose-colored view of practical Catholicism. 

Mrs. X turned to her daughters and said 

with all imaginable sweetness : *^ Just hear him, 
— the poor child!" Then she went off into a 
long, eloquent, and really interesting discourse 
on the true, sole, and original Christian Church. 
She admitted, however, that during the six- 
teenth century the Christian faith had much 
fallen into decay, and that Martin Luther was 
not to be blamed for his exhortations against 
the evil practices of popes and cardinals. Now 
that the Church had been reformed it was alto- 
gether different. She told us how she became 
converted. It came to her like a vision on a 
gloomy winter day, while she was looking into 
the embers of a wood-fire. 

Then she talked about Margaret Fuller, whom 



342 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

she called the most brilliant woman she had ever 
known. She had never loved another woman 
so much; but it was a dangerous love. If she 
wrote a rather gushing letter to Margaret, she 
would receive in reply, ''How could you have 
written so beautifully! You must have been 
inspired.'' This, she said, had all the effect of 
flattery without being intended for it, and was 
so much the more mischievous. "Emerson and 
Margaret Fuller," said Mrs. X , ''put in- 
spiration in the place of religion. They believed 
that some people had direct communication with 

the Almighty. ' ' P and I thought this might 

be true of Miss Fuller, but doubted it in Emer- 
son's case. 

Miss X told me that she had lately 

ascended to the rotunda of the Capitol, from 
which the pope's flag flies all day, and that she 
had asked the Swiss guard what he would do if 
she hoisted the tricolor there. He replied : "I 
should shoot you. ' ' Nothing could be more kind 
or truly courteous than the manner in which 
these ladies treated us. 

Another distinguished convert here is Mrs. 
Margaret Eveleth, a rare, spirituelle woman, 
who was born within a mile of my father's 
house. She was formerly a Unitarian, but 
soon became a Catholic on coming to Rome. 
While she was in process of transition from 
one church to the other she wrote a number of 



LEAVES FROM A ROMAN DIARY 343 

letters to her former pastor in New York, re- 
questing information on points of faith. Not 
one of these letters was ever answered, and it 
is incredible to suppose that they would not 
have been if he had received them. It is highly 
probable that they never left Rome. I have my- 
self been warned to attach my stamps to letters 
firmly, so that they may not be stolen in passing 
through the Post-office. Postage here is also 
double what it is in Florence. 

Feb. 12. — I have been looking for some time 
to find a good picture of Marcus Aurelius, and 
have generally become known among Roman 
photographers as the man who wants the Marc 
Aureli. This morning I had just left my room 
when I discovered Rev. Samuel Longfellow in 
a photograph shop in the Via Frattina. ' ^ I was 
just coming to see you," he said; ^'and I 
stopped here to look for a photograph of Mar- 
cus Aurelius." He laughed when I told him 
that I had been on the same quest, and sug- 
gested that we should walk to the Capitol 
together and look at the statue and bust of our 
favorite emperor. ' ' I think he was the greatest 
of the Romans, ' ' said Mr. Longfellow, ' ' if not 
the noblest of all the ancients." 

So we walked together — as we never shall 
again — through the long Cor so with its array of 
palaces, past the column of Aurelius and the 
fragments of Trajan's forum, until we reached 



344 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

the ancient Capitol of Rome, rearranged by 
Michael Angelo. Here we stood before the 
equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, and con- 
sidered how it might be photographed to advan- 
tage. ''I do not think," said Rev. Mr. Long- 
fellow, ^Hhat we can obtain a satisfactory 
picture of it. The face is too dark to be ex- 
pressive, and it is the man's face that I want; 
and I suppose you do also." 

I asked him how he could explain the creation 
of such a noble statue in the last decline of 
Greek art ; he said he would not attempt to ex- 
plain it except on the ground that things do not 
always turn out as critics and historians would 
have them. It was natural that the arts should 
revive somewhat under the patronage of 
Hadrian and the Antonines. 

We went into the museum of the Capitol to 
look for the bust of the young Aurelius, which 
shone like a star (to use Homer's expression) 
among its fellows, but we discovered from the 
earth-stains on portions of it why the photog- 
raphers had not succeeded better with it. We 
decided that our best resource would be to have 
Mr. Appleton's copy of it photographed, and 
Rev. Mr. Longfellow agreed to undertake the 
business with me in the forenoon of the next 
day. 

The busts of the Roman emperors were inter- 
esting because their characters are so strongly 



LEAVES FROM A ROMAN DIARY 345 

marked in history. The position would seem 
to have made either brutes or heroes of them. 
Tiberius, who was no doubt the natural son of 
Augustus, resembles him as a donkey does a 
horse. Caligula, Nero, and Domitian had small, 
feminine features ; Nero a bullet-head and sen- 
sual lips, but the others quite refined. During 
the first six years of Nero's reign he was not so 
bad as he afterwards became; and I saw an 
older bust of him in Paris which is too horrible 
to be looked at more than once. Vespasian has 
a coarse face, but wonderfully good-humored; 
and Titus, called 'Hhe delight of mankind,'' 
looks like an improvement on Augustus. The 
youthful Commodus bears a decided resem- 
blance to his father, and there is no indication 
in his face to suggest the monster which he 
finally became. 

Early in the next forenoon I reached the 
Hotel Costanzi in good season and inquired for 
the Eev. Mr. Longfellow. He soon appeared, 
together with Mr. T. G. Appleton, who was evi- 
dently pleased at my interest in the young Aure- 
lius, and remarked that it was a more interest- 
ing work than the young Augustus. The bust 
had been sent to William Story's studio to be 
cleaned, and thither we all proceeded in the best 
possible spirits. 

We found a photographer named Giovanni 
Braccia on the floor a piano above Mr. Story; 



346 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

and after a lengthy discussion with him, in 
which Mr. Longfellow was the leading figure, he 
agreed to take the photographs at two napo- 
leons a dozen.* When the bust was brought in 
Mr. Longfellow called my attention to the in- 
cisions representing pupils in the eyes, which 
he said were a late introduction in sculpture, 
and not generally considered an improvement. 
After this Mr. Appleton called to us to come 
with him to the studio of an English painter in 
the same building, whose name I cannot now 
recollect. He was the type of a graceful, ani- 
mated young artist, and had just finished a 
painting representing ancient youths and maid- 
ens in a procession with the light coming from 
the further side, so that their faces were mostly 
in shadow, with bright line along the profile, — 
an effect which it requires skill to render. 

On returning to the street we looked into Mr. 
Story's outer room again, where the casts of 
all his statues were seated in a double row like 
persons at a theatre. Mr. Appleton was rather 
severe in his criticism of them, though he ad- 
mitted that the Cleopatra (which I believe was 
a replica) had a finely modulated face. 

Feh. 15. — Warrington Wood invited P 

and myself to lunch with him in his studio, 

* These pictures proved to be fine reproductions, and are 
still to be met with in Boston and Cambridge parlors. 



LEAVES FROM A ROMAN DIARY 347 

and at the appointed time a waiter ap- 
peared from the Lapre with a great tin box on 
his shoulder filled with spaghetti, roast goat, 
and other Italian dishes. We had just spread 
these on a table in front of the clay model of 
Michael and Satan, when Wood's marble-cutter 
rushed in to announce the King and Queen of 
Naples. Wood hastily threw a green curtain 

over the dishes, while P and I retreated to 

the further end of the room. 

The Queen of Naples is a fine-looking and 
spirited person, still quite young, and talks Eng- 
lish well. She conversed with Wood and asked 
him a number of questions about his group, and 
also about the stag-hound, Eric, that was stand- 
ing sentinel. The King said almost nothing, 
and moving about as if he knew not what to do 
with himself, finally backed up against the table 
where our lunch was covered by the green cloth. 
I think he had an idea of sitting down on it, but 
the dishes set up such a clatter that he beat a 
hasty retreat. The King did not move a muscle 
of his countenance, but the Queen looked around 
and said something to him in Italian, laughing 
pleasantly. She is said to be friendly to Ameri- 
cans and is quite intimate with Miss Harriet 
Hosmer. She is at least a woman of noble cour- 
age, and when Garibaldi besieged Naples she 
went on to the ramparts and rallied the soldiers 
with the shells bursting about her. 



348 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

They subscribed themselves in Wood's regis- 
ter under the name of Bourbon, and after their 
departure we found our lunch cold, but perhaps 
we relished it better for this visitation of roy- 
alty. Then we all went to the carnival, where 
an Italian lazzaroni attempted to pick Wood's 
pocket, but was caught in the act and soundly 
kicked by Wood. 

This was the most entertaining event of the 
afternoon. The best part of the carnival was 
the quantity of fresh flowers that were brought 
in from the country and sold at very moderate 

prices. P distinguished himself throwing 

bouquets to ladies in the balconies. It is said 
that he has an admirer among them. For the 
first hour or so I found it entertaining enough, 
but after that I became weary of its endless 
repetition. Eighty years since Goethe, seated 
in one of these balconies, was obliged to ask for 
paper and pencil to drive away ennui, as he 
afterwards confessed. The carnival now is 
almost entirely given up to the English and 
Americans; while many of the lower class of 
Italians mix in it disguised in masks and fancy 
dresses. Four masked young women greeted us 
with confetti and danced about me on the side- 
walk. One tipped up my hat behind and another 
whispered a name in my ear which I did not 
suppose was known in Europe. I have not yet 
discovered who they were. 



LEAVES FROM A ROMAN DIARY 349 

Feb. 19. — I have had the pleasure of dining 
with that remarkable woman and once distin- 
guished actress, Miss Charlotte Cushman. Her 
nephew was consul at Rome, appointed by Wil- 
liam H. Seward, who was one of her warmest 
American friends. She is still queen of the 
stage, and of her own household, and uncon- 
sciously gives orders to the servants in a dra- 
matic manner which is sometimes very amusing. 
So it was to hear her sing, ^'Mary, call the 
cattle home," as if she were sending for the 
heavy artillery. She impresses me, however, 
as one of the most genuine of womankind ; and 
her conversation is delightful, — so sympathetic, 
appreciative, full of strong good sense, and 
fresh original views. She has small mercy on 
newly-converted Catholics. ^'The faults of 
men,'' she said, ^^are chiefly those of strength, 
but the faults of my own sex arise from weak- 
ness." I happened to refer to Mr. Appleton's 
bust of Aurelius, and she said she was surprised 
he had purchased it, for it did not seem to her 
a satisfactory copy; a conclusion that T had 
been slowly coming to myself. She has a bronze 
replica of Story's ''Beethoven" which, like 
most of his statues, is seated in a chair, and a 
rather realistic work, as Miss Cushman ad- 
mitted. I judged from the conversation at table 
that she is not treated with full respect by the 
English and American society here, although 



350 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

looked upon as a distinguished person. The 
reason for this may be more owing to the social 
position of her relatives than her former pro- 
fession. Mrs. Trelawney, the wife of Byron's 
eccentric friend, spoke of her to me a few days 
ago in terms of the highest esteem. She is a 
great-hearted woman, and her presence would 
be a moral power anywhere. 

There is snobbishness enough in Rome — Eng- 
lish, American, and Italian. Doolittle, who is 
the son of a highly respectable New York law- 
yer, went to the hunt last week, as he openly 
confessed, to give himself distinction. A young 
lady was thrown from her horse, and he was the 
first person to come to her assistance. She 
thanked him for it at the time, but two days 
afterwards declined to recognize his acquaint- 
ance. This was probably because he was an 
artist, or rather sets up for one, for he is more 
like a gentleman of leisure. 

MY LAST VISIT TO THE LONGFELLOWS. 

The Longfellow party will soon depart for 
Naples, and I went to the Costanzi to make my 
final call. Mr. Henry W. Longfellow was alone 
in his parlor cutting the leaves of a large book. 
He said that his brother had gone to the Pincion 
with the ladies, but would probably return soon. 
Everything this man says and does has the same 
grace and elevated tone as his poetry. I took 



LEAVES FROM A ROMAN DIARY 351 

a chair and pretty soon lie said to me, ^'How do 

you like your books, Mr. S 1 For my part, 

I prefer to cut the leaves of a book, for then I 
feel as if I had earned the right to read it/ ' I 
replied that I liked books with rough edges if 
they were printed on good paper ; and then he 
said, ^^See this remarkable picture." 

I drew my chair closer to him, and he showed 
me a large colored chart of Hell and Purgatory, 
according to the theory that prevailed in 
Dante's time. Satan with his three faces was 
represented in the centre, and on the other side 
rose the Mount of Purgatory. 

''It is an Italian commentary," he said, ''on 
the Divina Commedia,^^ which had been sent 
to him that day; and he added that some of 
the information in it was of a very curious 
sort. 

I asked him if he could read Italian as easily 
as English. "Very nearly," he replied; "but 
the fine points of Italian are as difficult as those 
of German." 

He inquired how I and my friends spent our 
evenings in Rome, and I said, "In all kinds of 

study and reading, but just now P was at 

work on Browning's 'Eing and the Book.' " 

Mr. Longfellow laughed. "I do not wonder 
you call it work," he said. "It seems to me a 
story told in so many different ways may be 



352 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

something of a curiosity — not mucli of a 
poem.'' * 

I remarked tliat Eev. Mr. Longfellow had a 
decided partiality for Browning. ^'Yes," he 
said; ^'Sam likes him, and my friend John 
Weiss prefers him to Tennyson. My objection 
is to his diction. I have always f onnd the Eng- 
lish language sufficient for my purpose, and 
have never tried to improve on it. Browning's 
^Saul' and ^The Ride from Ghent to Aix' are 
noble poems." 

^'Carlyle also," I said, '^has a peculiar dic- 
tion." ''That is true," he replied, ''but one 
can forgive anything to a writer who has so 
much to tell us as Carlyle. Besides, he writes 
prose, and not poetry." 

He took up a photograph which was lying on 
the table and showed it to me, saying, ' ' How do 
you like Miss Stebbins's 'Satan'!" I told him 
I hardly knew how to judge of such a subject. 
Then we both laughed, and Mr. Longfellow said : 
"I wonder what our artists want to make 
Satans for. I doubt if there is one of them that 
believes in the devil's existence." 

* I have since observed that poets as a class are not fair 
critics of poetry; for they are sure to prefer poetry which 
is like their own. This is true at least of Lowell, Emerson, 
or Matthew Arnold ; but when I came to read " The Ring 
and the Book" I found that Longfellow's objection was a 
valid one. 



LEAVES FROM A ROMAN DIARY 353 

I noticed on closer examination that the feat- 
ures resembled those of Miss Stebbins herself. 
Mr. Longfellow looked at it closely, and said, 
' ^ So it does, — somewhat. ' ' Then I told him that 
I asked Warrington Wood how he obtained the 
expression for his head of Satan, and that he 
said he did it by looking in the glass and making 
up faces. Mr. Longfellow laughed heartily at 
this, saying, ''I suppose Miss Stebbins did the 
same, and that is how it came about. Our sculp- 
tors should be careful how they put themselves 
in the devil's place. Wood has modelled a fine 
angel, and his group (Michael and Satan) is 
altogether an effective one." 

Rev. Mr. Longfellow and the ladies now came 
in, and as it was late I shook hands with them 
all. 

It is reported that when Mr. Longfellow met 
Cardinal Antonelli he remarked that Rome had 
changed less in the last fifteen years than other 
large cities, and that Antonelli replied, ''Yes; 
God be praised for it!'' 

Feh. 25. — The elder Herbert * has painted a 
fine picture, and we all went to look at it this 
afternoon, as it will be packed up to-morrow 
for the Royal Exhibition at London. He has 
chosen for his subject the verse of a Greek poet, 
otherwise unknown: 

* The elder of two brothers, sons of an English artist. 
23 



• 



354 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

" Unyoke your oxen, you fellow, 
And take the coulter out of your plough; 
For you are ploughing amid the graves of men, 
And the dust you turn up is the dust of your ancestors." 

Herbert has substituted buffalos for oxen as 
being more picturesque, though they were not 
imported into Italy until some time in the Mid- 
dle Ages. It is generally predicted that Herbert 
will become an E. A. like his father; but the 
subject is even more to his credit than his treat- 
ment of it. It is discussed at the Lapre whether 
this verse has been equalled by Tennyson or 
Longfellow, and the conclusion was: ^'Not 
proven. ' ' 

March 1. — The Longfellows are gone, and 
Rome is filling up with a different class of peo- 
ple who have come here to witness the fatiguing 
spectacles of Easter. One look at Michael An- 
gelo's ''Last Judgment" would be worth the 
whole of it to me. 

P is said to have captured his young lady, 

and it seems probable, for I see very little of 
him now. He disappears after breakfast, 
rushes through his dinner, and returns late in 
the evenings. So all the world changes. 



CENTENNIAL CONTRIBUTIONS 

THE ALCOTT CENTENNIAL 

Read at the Second Church, Copley Square, Boston, Wed- 
nesday, November 29, 1899 

A HUNDRED years ago A. Bronson Alcott was 
born, and thirty-three years later his daughter 
Louisa was born, happily on the same day of 
the year, as if for this very purpose, — that you 
might testify your appreciation of the good 
work they did in this world, at one and the same 
moment. It was a fortunate coincidence, which 
we like to think of to-day, as it undoubtedly 
gave pleasure to Bronson Alcott and his wife 
sixty-seven years ago. 

How genuine were Mr. Alcott and his daugh- 
ter, Louisa! ^^All else," says the sage, ^4s 
superficial and perishable, save love and truth 
only.'' It is through the love and truth that 
was in these two that we still feel their influence 
as if they were living to-day. How well I recol- 
lect Mr. Alcott 's first visit to my father's house 
at Medf ord, when I was a boy ! I had the same 
impression of him then that the consideration 
of his life makes on me now, — as an exceptional 
person, but one greatly to be trusted. I could 
see that he was a man who wished well to me, 

355 



356 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

and to all mankind; who had no intention of 
encroaching on my rights as an individual in 
any way whatever ; and who, furthermore, had 
no suspicion of me as a person alien to himself. 
The criticism made of him by my young brother 
held good of him then and always, — that *'he 
looked like one of Christ's disciples." His 
aspect was intelligently mild and gentle, un- 
mixed with the slightest taint of worldly self- 
interest. 

He heard that Goethe had said, '^We begin 
to sin as soon as we act ; ' ' but he did not agree 
to this, and was determined that one man at 
least should live in this world without sinning. 
He carried this plan out so consistently that, as 
he once confessed to me, it brought him to the 
verge of starvation. Then he realized that in 
order to play our part in the general order of 
things, — in order to obviate the perpetual ten- 
dency in human affairs to chaos, — we are con- 
tinually obliged to compromise. However, to 
the last he would never touch animal food. 
Others might murder sheep and oxen, but he, 
Bronson Alcott, would not be a partaker in what 
he considered a serious transgression of moral 
law. This brought him into antagonism with 
the current of modern opinion, which considers 
man the natural ruler of this earth, and that it 
is both his right and his duty to remodel it 
according to his ideas of usefulness and beauty. 



CENTENNIAL CONTRIBUTIONS 357 

It brought him into a life-long conflict with 
society, but how gallantly, how amiably he car- 
ried this on you all know. It cannot be said 
that he was defeated, for his spirit was uncon- 
querable. His purity of intention always re- 
ceived its true recognition ; and wherever Bron- 
son Alcott went he collected the most earnest, 
high-minded people about him, and made them 
more earnest, more high-minded by his conver- 
sation. 

How different was his daughter, Louisa, — the 
keen observer of life and manners; the witty 
story-teller with the pictorial mind; always 
sympathetic, practical, helpful — the mainstay of 
her family, a pillar of support to her friends; 
forgetting the care of her own soul in her inter- 
est for the general welfare ; heedless of her own 
advantage, and thereby obtaining for herself as 
a gift from heaven, the highest of all advan- 
tages, and the greatest of all rewards ! 

And yet, with so wide a difference in the prac- 
tical application of their lives, the well-spring 
of Louisa 's thought and the main-spring of her 
action were identical with those of her father, 
and may be considered an inheritance from him. 
For the well-spring of her thought was truth, 
and the main-spring of her action was love. 
There can be no fine art, no great art, no art 
which is of service to mankind, which does not 
originate on this twofold basis. We are told 



358 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

that when she was a young girl, on a voyage 
from Philadelphia to Boston, her face suddenly 
lighted up with the true brightness of genius, 
as she said, '^I love everybody in this whole 
world!'' If, afterwards, a vein of satire came 
to be mingled with this genial flow of human 
kindness, it was not Louisa's fault. 

In like manner, Bronson Alcott rested his 
argument for immortality on the ground of the 
family affections. "Such strong ties," he rea- 
soned, ^ ' could not have been made merely to be 
broken." Let us share his faith, and believe 
that they have not been broken. 



THE EMERSON CENTENNIAL 

EMERSON AND THE GREAT POETS 
Read in the Town Hall, Concord, Mass., July 23, 1903 

On his first visit to England, Emerson was so 
continually besieged with invitations that, as he 
wrote to Carlyle, answering the notes he re- 
ceived ^ ^ ate up his day like a cherry ; ' ' and yet 
I have never met but one Englishman, Dr. John 
Tyndall, the chemist, who seemed to appreciate 
Emerson's poetry, and few others who might 
be said to appreciate the man himself. Tyndall 
may have recognized Emerson's keen insight 
for the poetry of science in such verses as : 

" What time the gods kept carnival ; 
Tricked out in gem and flower; 
And in cramp elf and saurian form 
They swathed their too much power.^ 

A person who lacks some knowledge of geol- 
ogy would not be likely to understand this. 
Matthew Arnold and Edwin Arnold had no very 
high opinion of Emerson's poetry; and even 
Carlyle, who was Emerson's best friend in 
Europe, spoke of it in rather a disparaging 
manner. The ^'Mountain and the Squirrel" 

359 



360 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

and several others have been translated into 
German, but not those which we here consider 
the best of them. 

On the other hand, Dr. "William H. Furness 
considered Emerson '^heaven-high above our 
other poets;" C. P. Cranch preferred him to 
Longfellow ; Dr. F. H. Hedge looked upon him 
as the first poet of his time ; Rev. Samuel Long- 
fellow and Eev. Samuel Johnson held a very 
similar opinion, and David A. Wasson consid- 
ered Emerson's "Problem'' one of the great 
poems of the century. 

These men were all poets themselves, though 
they did not make a profession of it, and in that 
character were quite equal to Matthew Arnold, 
whose lecture on Emerson was evidently written 
under unfavorable influences. They were men 
who had passed through similar experiences to 
those which developed Emerson's mind and 
character, and could therefore comprehend him 
better than others. We all feel that Emerson's 
poetry is sometimes too abstruse, especially in 
his earlier verses, and that its meaning is often 
too recondite for ready apprehension ; but there 
are passages in it so luminous and so far-reach- 
ing in their application that only the supreme 
poets of all time have equalled them. 

Homer 's strength consists in his pictorial de- 
scriptions, but also sometimes in pithy reflec- 
tions on life and human nature; and it is in 



THE EMERSON CENTENNIAL 361 

these latter that Emerson often comes close to 
him. Most widely known of Homer's epigrams 
is that reply of Telemachns to Antiochus in the 
Odyssey, which Pope has rendered : 

" True hospitality is in these terms expressed, 
Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest." 

To which the following couplet from '^Wood- 
notes ' ' seems almost like a continuation : 

" Go where he will, the wise man is at home, 
His hearth the earth, — his hall the azure dome ;" 

The wise man carries rest and contentment 
in his own mental life, and is equally himself at 
the Corona d 'Italia and on a western ranch; 
while the weakling runs back to earlier associa- 
tions like a colt to its stable. But Homer is also 
Emersonian at times. What could be more so 
than Achilles 's memorable saying, which is re- 
peated by Ulysses in the Odyssey : ' ' More hate- 
ful to me than the gates of death is he who 
thinks one thing and speaks another;" or this 
exclamation of old Laertes in the last book of 
the Odyssey: ''What a day is this when I see 
my son and grandson contending in excellence !" 

It seems a long way from Dante to Emerson, 
and yet there are Dantean passages in "Wood- 
notes" and "Voluntaries." They are not in 
Dante 's matchless measure, but they have much 



362 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

of his grace, and more of his inflexible will. 
This warning against mercenary marriages 
might be compared to Dante's answer to the 
embezzling Pope Nicholas III. in Canto XIX. 
of the Inferno : 

" He shall be happy in his love, 
Like to like shall joyful prove; 
He shall be happy whilst he woos. 
Muse-born, a daughter of the Muse. 
But if with gold she bind her hair, 
And deck her breast with diamond, 
Take off thine eyes, thy heart forbear. 
Though thou lie alone on the ground. 
The robe of silk in which she shines. 
It was woven of many sins; 
And the shreds 
Which she sheds 
In the wearing of the same, 
Shall be grief on grief. 
And shame on shame." 

There is a Spartan-like severity in this, but 
so was Dante very severe. It was his mission 
to purify the moral sense of his countrymen in 
an age when the Church no longer encouraged 
virtue; and Emerson no less vigorously op- 
posed the rank materialism of America in a 
period of exceptional prosperity. 

The next succeeding lines are not exactly 
Dantean, but they are among Emerson's finest, 
and worthy of any great poet. The ''Pine 
Tree" says: 



THE EMERSON CENTENNIAL 363 

" Heed the old oracles, 
Ponder my spells; 
Song wakes in my pinnacles 
When the wind swells. 
Soundeth the prophetic wind, 
The shadows shake on the rock behind, 
And the countless leaves of the pine are strings 
Tuned to the lay the wood-god sings." 

Again we are reminded of Dante in the opening 
passages of '^Voluntaries'' : 

" Low and mournful be the strain. 

Haughty thought be far from me; 
Where a captive lies in pain 

Moaning by the tropic sea. 
Sole estate his sire bequeathed — 

Hapless sire to hapless son — 
Was the wailing song he breathed. 

And his chain when life was done." 

It is still more difficult to compare Emerson 
with Shakespeare, for the one was Puritan with 
a strong classic tendency, and the other anti- 
Puritan with a strong romantic tendency; but 
allowing for this and for Shakespeare's univer- 
sality, it may be affirmed that there are few 
passages in King Henry IV. and Henry V. 
which take a higher rank than Emerson's de- 
scription of Cromwell: 

" He works, plots, fights 'mid rude affairs. 
With squires, knights, kings his strength compares; 



364 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

Till late he learned through doubt and fear, 
Broad England harbored not his peer: 
Unwilling still the last to own, 
The genius on his cloudy throne." 

Emerson learned a large proportion of his 
wisdom from Goethe, as he frequently con- 
fessed, but where in Goethe's poetry will yon 
find a quatrain of more penetrating beauty or 
wider significance than this from ''Wood- 
notes'': 

" Thou canst not wave thy staff in air 
Nor dip thy paddle in the lake, 
But it carves the bow of beauty there, 
And ripples in rhyme the oar forsake." 

Or this one from the ''Building of the 
House" — considered metaphorically as the 
life structure of man: 

" She lays her beams in music, 
In music every one, 
To the cadence of the whirling world 
Which dances round the sun." 

There is a flash as of heaven's own lightning 
in some of his verses, and his name has become 
a spell to conjure with. 



THE HAWTHORNE CENTENNIAL 

HAWTHOKNE AS AKT CKITIC 

When the ** Marble Faun'' was first pub- 
lished the art criticism in it, especially of sculp- 
tors and painters who were then living, created 
a deal of discussion, which has been revived 
again by the recent centennial celebration. 
Hawthorne himself was the most perfect artist 
of his time as a man of letters, and the judg- 
ment of such a person ought to have its value, 
even when it relates to subjects which are be- 
yond the customary sphere of his investiga- 
tions, and for which he has not made a serious 
preparation. In spite of the adage, ' ' every man 
to his own trade,'' it may be fairly asserted that 
much of Hawthorne's art criticism takes rank 
among the finest that has been written in any 
language. On the other hand, there are in- 
stances, as might be expected, in which he has 
failed to hit the mark. 

These latter may be placed in two classes: 
Firstly, those in which he indicates a partial- 
ity for personal acquaintances; and secondly, 
those in which he has followed popular opinion 
at the time, or the opinion of others, without 
sufficient consideration. 

866 



366 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

American society in Eome is always split up 
into various cliques, — which is not surprising in 
view of the adventitious manner in which it 
comes together there, — and in Hawthorne's 
time the two leading parties were the Story and 
the Crawford factions. The latter was a man 
of true genius, and not only the best of Ameri- 
can sculptors, but perhaps the greatest sculptor 
of the nineteenth century. His statue of Bee- 
thoven is in the grand manner, and instinct with 
harmony, not only in attitude and expression, 
but even to the arrangement of the drapery. 
Crawford's genius was only too well appre- 
ciated, and he was constantly carrying off the 
prizes of his art from all competitors. Conse- 
quently it was inevitable that other sculptors 
should be jealous of him, and should unite 
together for mutual protection. Story was a 
man of talent, and not a little of an amateur, 
but he was the gentlemanly entertainer of those 
Americans who came to the city with good let- 
ters of introduction. Hawthorne evidently fell 
into Story's hands. He speaks slightingly of 
Crawford, and praises Story's statue of Cleo- 
patra in unqualified terms ; and yet there seems 
to have been an undercurrent of suspicion in 
his mind, for he says more than once in the 
^^ Marble Faun" that it would appear to be a 
failing with sculptors to speak unfavorably of 
the work of other sculptors, and this, of course, 



THE HAWTHORNE CENTENNIAL 367 

refers to those with whom he was acquainted, 
and whom he sometimes rated above their value. 
Warrington Wood, the best English sculptor 
of thirty years ago, praised Story's ^^Cleopa- 
tra'' to me, and I believe that Crawford also 
would have praised it. Neither has Hawthorne 
valued its expression too highly — the expres- 
sion of worldly splendor incarnated in a beau- 
tiful woman on the tragical verge of an abyss. 
If she only were beautiful! Here the limita- 
tions of the statue commence. Hawthorne says : 
''The sculptor had not shunned to give the full, 
Nubian lips, and other characteristics of the 
Egyptian physiognomy. ' ' Here he follows the 
sculptor himself, and it is remarkable that a 
college graduate like William Story should have 
made so transparent a mistake. Cleopatra was 
not an Egyptian at all. The Ptolemies were 
Greeks, and it is simply impossible to believe 
that they would have allied themselves with a 
subject and alien race. This kind of small ped- 
antry has often led artists astray, and was 
peculiarly virulent during the middle of the 
last century. The whole figure of Story's 
''Cleopatra" suffers from it. He says again: 
"She was draped from head to foot in a cos- 
tume minutely and scrupulously studied from 
that of ancient Egypt." In fact, the body and 
limbs of the statue are so closely shrouded as to 
deprive the work of that sense of freedom of 



368 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

action and royal abandon which, greets ns in 
Shakespeare's and Plutarch's *' Cleopatra.'' 
Story might have taken a lesson from Titian's 
matchless '^Cleopatra" in the Cassel Gallery, 
or from Marc Antonio's small woodcut of 
Raphael's ^ ^ Cleopatra. " 

Hawthorne was an idealist, and he idealized 
the materials in Story's studio, for literary pur- 
poses, just as Shakespeare idealized Henry V., 
who was not a magnanimous monarch at all, 
but a brutal, narrow-minded fighter. The dis- 
course on art, which he develops in this manner, 
forms one of the most valuable chapters in the 
^^ Marble Faun." It assists us in reading it to 
remember that Story was not the model for 
Hawthorne's '^Kenyon," but a very different 
character. The passage in which he criticises 
the methods of modern sculptors has often been 
quoted in later writings on that subject; and I 
suppose the whole brotherhood of artists would 
rise up against me if I were to support Haw- 
thorne's condemnation of nude Venuses and 
'Hhe guilty glimpses stolen at hired models." 

They are not necessarily guilty glimpses. To 
an experienced artist the customary study from 
a naked figure, male or female, is little more 
than what a low-necked dress would be to others. 
Yet the instinct of the age shrinks from this 
exposure. We can make pretty good Venuses, 
but we cannot look at them through the same 



THE HAWTHORNE CENTENNIAL 369 

mental and moral atmosphere as the cotempo- 
raries of Scopas, or even with the same eyes 
that Michael Angelo did. We feel the difference 
between a modern Venns and an ancient one. 
There is a statue in the Vatican of a Eoman 
emperor, of which every one says that it ought 
to wear clothes ; and the reason is because the 
face has such a modern look. A raving Bac- 
chante may be a good acquisition to an art 
museum, but it is out of place in a public library. 
A female statue requires more or less drapery 
to set off the outlines of the figure and to give 
it dignity. We feel this even in the finest Greek 
work — like the Venus of Cnidos. 

In this matter Hawthorne certainly exposes 
his Puritanic education, and he also places too 
high a value on the carving of buttonholes and 
shoestrings by Italian workmen. Such things 
are the fag-ends of statuary. 

His judgment, however, is clear and con- 
vincing in regard to the tinted Eves and 
Venuses of Gibson. Whatever may have been 
the ancient practice in this respect, Gibson's 
experiment proved a failure. Nobody likes 
those statues ; and no other sculptor has since 
followed Gibson's example. 

Hawthorne overestimates the Apollo Belvi- 
dere, as all the world did at that time ; but his 
single remark concerning Canova is full of sig- 
nificance: ^^In these precincts which Canova 's 

24 



370 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

genius was not quite of a character to render 
sacred, though it certainly made them interest- 
ing," etc. 

He goes to the statue gallery in the Vatican 
and returns with a feeling of dissatisfaction, 
and justly so, for the vast majority of statues 
there are merely copies, and many of them very 
bad copies. He recognizes the Laocoon for 
what it really is, the abstract type of a Greek 
tragedy. He notices what has since been 
proved by severe archaeological study, that most 
of the possible types and attitudes of marble 
statues had been exhausted by the Greeks long 
before the Christian era. Miss Hosmer's Ze- 
nobia was originally a Ceres, and even Craw- 
ford's Orpheus strongly resembles a figure in 
the Niobe group at Florence. 

But Hawthorne's description of the Faun of 
Praxiteles stands by itself. As a penetrative 
analysis of a great sculptor's motive it is un- 
equalled by any modern writer on art, and this 
is set forth with a grace and delicacy worthy of 
Praxiteles himself. The only criticism which 
one feels inclined to make of it is that it too 
Hawthornish, too modern and elaborate; but 
is not this equally true of all modern criticism? 
We cannot return to the simplicity of the 
Greeks any more than we can to their customs. 
If Hawthorne would seem to discover too much 
in this statue, which is really a poor Roman 



THE HAWTHORNE CENTENNIAL 371 

copy, he has himself given us an answer to this 
objection. In Volume II., Chapter XIL, he 
says : ^ ^ Let the canvas glow as it may, you must 
look with the eye of faith, or its highest excel- 
lence escapes you. There is always the neces- 
sity of helping out the painter's art with your 
own resources of sensibility and imagination.'' 
His cursory remarks on Raphael are not less 
pertinent and penetrating. Of technicalities he 
knew little, but no one, perhaps, has sounded 
such depths of that clairvoyant master 's nature, 
and so brought to light the very soul of him. 

The ^^ Marble Faun" may not be the most 
perfect of Hawthorne's works, but it is much 
the greatest, — an epic romance, which can only 
be compared with Goethe's ^^Wilhelm Meister." 

HAWTHORNE AND HAMLET. 

A Reply to Professor Bliss Perry, 

To compare a person in real life with a char- 
acter in fiction is not uncommon, but it is more 
conducive to solidity of judgment to compare 
the living with the living, and the imaginary 
with the imaginary. The chief difficulty, how- 
ever, in Hamlet's case, is that he only appears 
before us as a person acting in an abnormal 
mental condition. The mysterious death of his 
father, the suspicion of his mother's complicity 
in crime, which takes the form of an apparition 



372 CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

from beyond the grave, is too mucli of a strain 
for his tender and impressible nature. His 
mental condition has become well known to phy- 
sicians as cerebral hypercemia, and all his 
strange speeches and eccentric actions are to 
be traced to this source ; and it is for this rea- 
son that the dispute has arisen as to whether 
Hamlet was not partially insane. If the strain 
continued long enough he would no doubt have 
become insane. 

As well as we can penetrate through this ad- 
ventitious nimbus, we discover Hamlet to be a 
person of generous, princely nature, high- 
minded and chivalrous. He is cordial to every 
one, but always succeeds in asserting the supe- 
riority of his position, even in his conversation 
with Horatio. If he is mentally sensitive he 
shows no indication of it. He never appears shy 
or reserved, but on the contrary, confident and 
even bold. This may be owing to the mental 
excitement under which he labors ; but the best 
critics from Goethe down have accredited him 
with a lack of resolution; and it is this which 
produces the catastrophe of the play. He must 
have realized, as we all do, that after the scene 
of the players in which he ^^ catches the con- 
science of a king, ' ' his life was in great danger. 
He should either have organized a conspiracy 
at once, or fled to the court of Fortinbras ; but 
he allows events to take their course, and is con- 



THE HAWTHORNE CENTENNIAL 373 

trolled by them instead of shaping his own des- 
tiny. Instead of planning and acting he philoso- 
phizes. 

Of Hawthorne, on the contrary, we know 
nothing except as a person in a perfectly normal 
condition. His wife once said that she had 
rarely known him to be indignant, and never to 
lose his temper. He was the most sensitive of 
men, but he also possesed an indomitable will. 
It was only his terrible determination that could 
make his life a success. Emerson, who had little 
sympathy with him otherwise, always admired 
the perfect equipoise of his nature. A man 
could not be more thoroughly himself ; but, such 
a reticent, unsociable character as Hawthorne 
could never be used as the main-spring of a 
drama, for he would continually impede the 
progress of the plot. A dramatic character 
needs to be a talkative person; one that either 
acts out his internal life, or indirectly exposes 
it. Hawthorne's best friends do not appear to 
have known what his real opinions were. This 
perpetual reserve, this unwillingness to assimi- 
late himself to others, may have been necessary 
for the perfection of his art. 

The greater a writer or an artist, the more 
unique he is, — the more sharply defined from all 
other members of his class. Hawthorne cer- 
tainly did not resemble Scott, Dickens, or 
Thackeray, either in his life or his work. He 



374 • CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES 

was perhaps more like Auerbach than any other 
writer of the nineteenth century, but still more 
like Goldsmith. The ' ' Vicar of Wakefield ' ' and 
the '^ House of the Seven Gables'' are the two 
perfect romances in the English tongue; and 
the ^'Deserted Village," though written in 
poetry, has very much the quality of Haw- 
thorne's shorter sketches. ''And tales much 
older than the ale went round" is closely akin 
to Hawthorne 's humor ; yet there was little out- 
ward similarity between them, for Goldsmith 
was often gay and sometimes frivolous; and 
although Hawthorne never published a line of 
poetry he was the more poetic of the two, as 
Goldsmith was the more dramatic. He also re- 
sembled Goldsmith in his small financial diffi- 
culties. 

In his persistent reserve, in the seriousness 
of his delineation, and in his indifference to the 
opinions of others, Hawthorne reminds us some- 
what of Michael Angelo; but he is one of the 
most unique figures among the world's geniuses. 



31^77-2 



